Research
Los Horcones is mainly a cultural experiment. Throughout our 25 years, we have conducted several experiments, mainly on human behavior*. Many of the current cultural practices of Los Horcones have been based on the results we have obtained in those experiments.
*Human behavior is for us, the most important area of a community. It is relatively easy to build ecological or self-sufficient communities. What is difficult is to build a community where members can be productive and happy, really help each other, cooperate for the common good, share their knowledge, skills, goods, etc. Building a community self-sufficient in energy or food is relatively easy. The challenge is in the area of human behavior.
At the beginnings of Los Horcones we carried on research related to moral behaviors. We call "experimental ethics" the application of behavior analysis to the study of values. Based on experimental ethics we elaborated our behavior code (code of behavioral contingencies).
Then we conducted experiments in our 4 basic behaviors: cooperation, sharing, equality and pacifism (non-violence). At that time we also conducted research on their counterpart (competition, aggression, possessiveness, discrimination).
Later we conducted extensive research on natural reinforcement, as an alternative to contrived reinforcement. We published a very general outline of the results in the Mexican Journal of Behavior Analysis and in the Journal for Applied Behavior Analysis. See Bibliography.
Last up-date: June 18, 1999*
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