How Does It Feel to Leave Your Protest?

Abstract

Social justice movements, protests, marches, and direct action are collective events including many people. Although organizers should carefully plan the goals and strategies of these actions broadly, and behavior analysts have made significant progress to systems level analyses of social and cultural practices, it is important to continue to include analyses of the individuals involved and how the contingencies of protest may encourage or discourage continued involvement. One critical aspect of these contingencies, I argue, is how the action ends. Two protest actions are analyzed as a participant with a focus on how the protest ended and if the operant “attending a protest” was reinforced or punished.