Role of Cultural Milieu in Cultural Change: Mediating Factor in Points of Contact

Cultural Milieu and Group-Rules in an Elaborated Account of Metacontingencies: Conceptual Analysis and an Illustration in a COVID-19 Psychological Support Project

“…Houmanfar and Rodrigues ( 2006 ) introduced the cultural milieu as an antecedent element in metacontingencies, but Houmanfar et al ( 2010 ) renamed it as cultural-organizational milieu, specifying that “The change in term more explicitly notes the interactive relationship between the resources, practices, and infrastructure of the larger society with those within an organization or an organized cultural group (e.g., a couple making dinner)” (p. 89). Still, considering the conceptual similarities between cultural milieu and cultural-organizational milieu, as well as changes in the use of the terms by the authors themselves (e.g., Houmanfar et al, 2020 ), we will treat them together, always referring to the more general term cultural milieu . In this section, we will argue that the cultural milieu encompasses two functionally distinct entities: (1) antecedent environmental variables affecting the culturant (the organization members’ activities)—what we termed cultural antecedents ; and (2) variables affecting the selecting environment or the consumer practices (members external to the organization responsible for producing CCs)—what we termed selecting environment variables .…”

“…Importantly, Houmanfar and colleagues ( 2010 , 2020 ) suggested a kind of reciprocal relation between CCs and the cultural milieu: consumer purchases of goods (i.e., CCs) often alter the organization’s prevailing “beliefs” and “predictions” regarding the market (i.e., cultural milieu), resulting in changed culturants. In this sense, the selective action of the CCs would occur because of changes in antecedents rather than directly altering the culturant.…”

“…Recently, however, Houmanfar et al ( 2020 ) presented (or at least clarified) a different role of the cultural milieu, defining it as “the collection of stimulus functions influencing the acquisition and maintenance of interlocked behaviors [i.e., IBCs] and the behavior of individuals interacting with the associated aggregate products ” (p. 154, italics added). This last statement suggests that the cultural milieu encompasses variables affecting the selecting environment, i.e., the consumers—individuals external to the organization responsible for producing CCs.…”

“…One example could be advocacy organizations’ public interventions to offset tobacco companies’ deceptive marketing and expose tobacco-related health costs, altering consumer purchases of cigarettes. According to Houmanfar et al’s ( 2020 ) formulation, the advocacy organizations would be a part of the tobacco companies’ cultural milieu, even if they do not directly affect the culturants emitted by the tobacco companies, but only the consumer practices of cigarette smokers.…”

“…The concept of group-rule generation , however, captures another role of verbal behavior in the dynamics of metacontingencies. The concept was first presented by Houmanfar et al ( 2010 ) and then defined by Houmanfar et al ( 2020 ) as “the cultural entity’s (e.g., organization) response to the practices of consumers, typically in the form of verbal rules crafted by those in power that may alter the cultural milieu and the socio-IBs” (p. 35). In this section, we will argue that: (a) group-rule generation is not an element of a metacontingency distinct from the culturant, but that it describes verbal components of the IBCs; and that (b) these verbal components are not present in all culturants but are especially important in more complex ones.…”