New findings emerging from developmental behavior genetics indicate that individuals living in the same family develop in ways that make them remarkably different from each other despite the commonalities of shared genes and shared environments. These findings suggest that there are important factors residing within families that are not shared by family members that are nevertheless influential in development. The most discussed of these influences has been called environment, meaning environmental influences that operate within families and that are uniquely experienced by particular family members. In this paper we explore the nature of nonshared influences on development, develop a set of criteria that any theoretical approach must incorporate to deal effectively with the development of individuality in light of these new findings, and offer an analysis of the extent to which these criteria can be incorporated by an established theory of environmental influence: radical behaviorism. Disciplines undergo upheavals when confronted by findings that are not easily incorporated into existing theory. The upheavals may be delayed or denied for a period of time, as Kuhn (1970) has argued, but they become unavoidable if the new findings are confirmed by continuing research and yet remain unexplained within the confines of extant paradigms. Psychology may currently be in the midst of a revolution of this sort owing to findings emanating from developmental behavior genetics concerning the extent to which family members differ from each other despite the commonalities provided by shared genes and shared environments. These differences between family members are dramatic and unanticipated, so much so that they have been characterized as constituting an explanatory problem that the community seems utterly unprepared to deal with ... (Scarr, 1987, p. 38). In what follows we explore the phenomenon of nonshared development with two goals in mind: The first is to examine the extent to which this phenomenon requires a revolution in psychological thinking. The second is to examine how this phenomenon may be incorporated by what is arguably the predominant theory of environmental influence: Skinner's radical behaviorism.
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