Beyond Murray Sidman’s Coercion And Its Fallout

Abstract

In Coercion and Its Fallout, Sidman (1989) proposes that coercion Is at the root of many harmful and ineffective interpersonal and social practices. After critically examining coercion, he offers an alternative in the form of positive reinforcement based on naturally occurring deprivations. This paper proposes that Sidman’s thesis can be extended by the incorporation of Goldiamond’s constructional approach and Powers’s perceptual control theory. It argues that the latter provides a coherent framework for understanding the effects of coercion and how there might even be negative side effects of the use of positive reinforcement.