Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science

The Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science is the official journal of the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science (ACBS).

Contextual Behavioral Science is a systematic and pragmatic approach to the understanding of behavior, the solution of human problems, and the promotion of human growth and development. Contextual Behavioral Science uses functional principles and theories to analyze and modify action embedded in its historical and situational context. The goal is to predict and influence behavior, with precision, scope, and depth, across all behavioral domains and all levels of analysis, so as to help create a behavioral science that is more adequate to the challenge of the human condition.

Contextual behavioral science is a strategic approach to the analysis of human behavior that proposes the need for a multi-level (e.g. social factors, neurological factors, behavioral factors) and multi-method (e.g., time series analyses, cross-sectional, experimental) exploration of contextual and manipulable variables relevant to the prediction and influence of human behavior.

The journal considers papers relevant to a contextual behavioral approach including:

Empirical studies (without topical restriction - e.g., clinical psychology, psychopathology, education, organizational psychology, etc.)

Brief reports on preliminary, but still impactful findings (e.g., pilot studies, cross-sectional research on psychological flexibility processes)

Reviews (e.g., scoping reviews, systematic reviews, meta-analyses)

Conceptual and philosophical papers on contextual behavioral science

Practical innovations (descriptions of practical innovation applying contextual behavioral science)

Commentaries

Registered reports

We are particularly interested in:

Papers that examine theories and interventions based in CBS (e.g., process-based therapy, acceptance & commitment therapy, relational frame theory, functional analytic psychotherapy, compassion-focused therapy, etc...) to novel research areas with rigorous methodologies. We currently are especially interested in increasing the number of published articles on basic CBS research and translational research.

Papers bridging different approaches (e.g., connecting behavioral approaches with cognitive views; or neurocognitive psychology; or evolutionary science)

Papers that challenge a contextual behavioral science approach from an informed perspective

Papers that are written from the perspective of and/or report data collected from diverse, underrepresented, and minoritized individuals.

The journal welcomes papers written by researchers, practitioners, and theoreticians from different intellectual traditions. What is distinctive is not a narrowly defined theory or set of applied methods but whether the methodology, conceptualization, or strategy employed is relevant to a contextual behavioral approach.

JCBS has been receiving an increasing number of submissions that compete for limited space for publication. A notable portion of submissions to JCBS are cross-sectional survey studies on psychological flexibility-related processes (e.g., validating these measures, testing their relation to mental health and related outcomes). In order to balance research on these topics with other important methodologies and research areas of CBS, we are unfortunately only able to accept especially innovative and rigorous research using cross-sectional survey designs, and typically only when submitted as a brief report.

Special Issues

The Journal welcomes suggestions for Special Issues. Proposals for a themed Special Issue should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief, Michael Levin at [email protected], and should include suggested Executive, Advisory or Guest Editors, a proposed call-for-papers, 6-10 provisional authors and topics (specific titles or general areas), a proposed timeline for submission, peer-reviewing, revision and publication. All manuscripts in a special issue will be subject to the normal process of peer-review.