Grounding Yourself in the Science of Behavior: Getting Antecedents Right

Many readers may be familiar with the ABC Model, a paradigm which originated in the science of behavior, or the field of Behavior Analysis. While the language of antecedent-behavior-consequence wasn’t introduced until 1968¹, when the paradigm was first proposed in 1938 it represented a profound and radically different approach to understanding behavior. This paradigm has never been more relevant than it is today, particularly in safety, given the progressively widespread recognition that the environment (context) influences behavior. 

Unfortunately, the model is often misunderstood and mischaracterized. In this article, I will discuss what the ABC model is and is not, with a focus on what most people recognize as antecedents. I’ll provide a little background on what antecedents are, how they work, and some practical takeaways for readers and organizations seeking to go beyond simply acknowledging that the environment influences behavior to understanding how this happens. Finally, I’ll explain how leaders and organizations can intentionally leverage what the science tells us about antecedents to improve safety and overall organizational performance.

The ABC model explains the relationship between environment and behavior.

The Original ABC Model

Early accounts of behavior focused on “involuntary” behavior that is triggered reflexively by some stimulus or event that precedes it. The classic example is Pavlov demonstrating that when he placed food in dogs’ mouths (preceding event), dogs salivated (behavior). The paradigm for involuntary behavior was described as stimulus-response and shorthanded as S-R. However, the S-R model didn’t account for a large amount of “voluntary” behavior, where there was no clear precursor or antecedent event. The relevance of involuntary vs. voluntary behavior is that most, if not all, behaviors of interest related to safety and organizational performance are considered “voluntary” behaviors. Examples include leaders making decisions that separate workers from hazards in the design phase of organizational change, an employee following a procedure or calling a work stoppage, or someone wearing PPE.

As researchers expanded their focus from before behavior to both before and after behavior, they learned that stimuli or events that followed behavior (i.e., consequences) exerted great influence on behavior. With this newfound knowledge, the stimulus-response-stimulus (i.e., S-R-S) paradigm was born.² The S-R-S model later became the A-B-C model in an attempt to differentiate stimuli or environmental factors that go before behavior (i.e., the literal meaning of antecedent is to go before) and those that follow behavior. And this distinction between antecedent and consequent events matters in understanding and influencing behavior. While many readers may have encountered the ABC model through their work in safety, it is not a safety model, and it predates its application to safety. Instead, the ABC model is an expansive model for understanding the relationship between the environment and human and nonhuman behavior.

Matching Behavior to Environment

Behavior in everyday life is influenced by people or things we can see, smell, taste, hear, or touch, such as signs, instructions, alarms, the scent of fresh bread baking, or a rancid flavor. In theory, anything or anyone can become an antecedent that influences any behavior. In safety, common antecedents include training, standard operating procedures (SOPs), JSAs, pre-job briefings, meetings, emails, reminders, etc. Some antecedents, when introduced or encountered, dramatically increase the likelihood of certain behaviors occurring, while others fail to cue desired behaviors consistently or at all. Why do some antecedents work and others don’t? 

As we navigate our day-to-day lives, we attempt to match our behavior to our environment. That is, any given behavior is not desired or undesired, appropriate or inappropriate; it depends on the context. Accelerating through an intersection isn’t good or bad; it depends on whether the traffic light is green or red, or whether you’re in a small rural area with no traffic or in a large city at rush hour. So how do we learn to read the environment so that we know what behaviors fit or match different environments, and why do some signals or antecedents work better than others to inform our behavior?
 

Learning to Read the Environment

In my work with leaders, I’ve run across the common misconception that some antecedents either do or do not influence behavior. Identifying effective antecedents isn’t a hit-or-miss process. Instead, there is a systematic process called discrimination learning that involves someone learning to read the signals or antecedents around them. What we want is for people to do certain behaviors in certain situations and not in others. For example, we want people to call a work stoppage when new hazards emerge or controls fail or are defeated, but not when all hazards are identified and all controls are implemented and operated correctly. 

The simplest way to teach people what behaviors to do and when to do them (i.e., help them learn to discriminate) is to reinforce a behavior in one situation (situation or antecedent A) and withhold reinforcement for the same behavior in another situation (situation or antecedent B). Over time, as the person repeatedly experiences performing the behavior and the behavior being reinforced in situation A, but not in situation B (or any other situations), then situation A becomes a signal informing the person about which behaviors work under these conditions, and which don’t. 

Going back to the work stoppage example, discrimination learning will occur when someone experiences the following repeatedly over time: 

• When a new hazard emerges or installed controls fail or are defeated (situation or antecedent A), 
• An employee calls a work stoppage (behavior), and 
• Their supervisor thanks them and immediately resolves any issues (reinforcing consequence)

AND 

• When all hazards are identified and hazard controls are properly installed, operated, and maintained (situation or antecedent B), 
• The same employee calls a work stoppage (same behavior as above), and 
• Their supervisor asks why the stoppage was called and instructs the employee to get back to work (reinforcement is withheld and/or possibly the behavior is punished)

Over time, antecedent A becomes meaningful to the employee, signaling that calling a work stoppage will result in reinforcement. This is how people learn to read the signals informing them about what behavior matches the current antecedent conditions. 

What’s important about discrimination learning is that when people learn to read the signals, antecedents correlated with reinforcement will begin to reliably cue desired behaviors. People are more likely to do important behaviors when those behaviors need to happen. Again, discrimination learning often happens naturally, but it can be arranged intentionally to increase the likelihood that certain behaviors will occur under certain conditions.

Antecedents can also become signals for negative or punishing consequences.³ For example, if a person’s manager has their door closed (antecedent A), and the person knocks and interrupts their manager (behavior), and the manager abruptly tells them to come back later (negative or punishing consequence), then over time the closed door comes to signal that interrupting is likely to be punished. With this example of discrimination learning, the presence of a closed door will actually decrease the likelihood of the person interrupting their manager. So, antecedents can signal both positive and negative consequences and become effective in reliably cueing or suppressing certain behaviors. However, without the repeated associations between antecedents, behaviors, and consequences involved in discrimination learning, potential antecedents would have little to no effect on behavior. 

Weak and Strong Antecedent Influence 

An antecedent’s level of influence isn’t static; it can fluctuate over time. An antecedent that reliably cues behavior can lose that influence such that the antecedent no longer cues the behavior or cues it inconsistently. Similarly, an antecedent that fails to cue certain behaviors can develop stronger influence and begin to reliably cue desired behaviors. What determines how effective antecedents are in cueing behavior is the consistency with which the antecedents and consequences (e.g., positive reinforcement) continue to be linked. In the above work stoppage example, if new hazards emerge or controls fail or are defeated (antecedent A) and a person calls a work stoppage (behavior), but the supervisor tells the person they’re behind schedule and they need to keep working (negative or punishing consequence), then antecedent A begins to lose its grip on behavior. Another way to think about this is that antecedent A becomes a poor predictor of whether the behavior will be followed by reinforcement. When the antecedent is no longer highly correlated with reinforcement for the behavior of interest, the antecedent loses its ability to reliably cue the behavior until the behavior no longer occurs or occurs inconsistently. This is how antecedent influence changes over time.

Leveraging the Science of Antecedent Influence 

With a better understanding of what antecedents are and how they work, putting this knowledge to work for you and those around you comes down to two recommendations: 1) be intentional, and 2) become a good observer of environment-behavior relationships.

Be intentional about linking your antecedents to reinforcing consequences. If you want SOPs, expectations, safety briefings, JSAs, use of tools like the energy wheel, etc., which are all potential antecedents, to reliably cue certain behaviors, then when those behaviors occur in the presence of those antecedents, build in positive reinforcement for those behaviors. I won’t do a deep dive on positive reinforcement here (topic for a future article), but a leader’s role here is to build an environment that strengthens the right behaviors under the right conditions. It’s best not to leave this up to chance or trial and error. Discrimination learning provides the methodology for making this happen, so be intentional about helping people read the environment by following up with people and looking for opportunities to connect behavior with reinforcement. 

How will you know if your antecedents are maintaining, gaining, or losing influence on behavior? Put eyes on behaviors and the conditions under which they do and do not occur. The science has looked to the environment for decades to understand why people do what they do, and you can leverage this knowledge by doing the same thing. If antecedents worked in the past to cue behavior but no longer do, what is that telling you? It’s possible the linkage between antecedents and reinforcing consequences has become sparse or nonexistent. Re-establish the link. If you know which direction behavior is trending, and you know the context in which behaviors do and do not occur, the science fills in the blanks to help you course correct. Knowing that context influences behavior isn’t enough. Knowing how the environment interacts with behavior is often the missing element organizations need to close the gap in organizational performance.

References

1. Bijou, S. W., Peterson, R. F., & Ault, M. H. (1968). A method to integrate descriptive and experimental field studies at the level of data and empirical concepts. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 1, 175-191.↩

2. Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2007). Applied behavior analysis (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education.↩

3. Schneider, S.M. (2012). The science of consequences: How they affect genes, change the brain, and impact our world. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.↩