How Groups Shape Behaviour

Part of the "Introduction to Contextual Behavioural Science" Series

One of my favourite bands growing up was Midnight Oil, led by Peter Garrett — a passionate environmental activist who spent decades fighting against uranium mining. Yet after becoming Australia's Environment Minister, he approved a uranium mine expansion.

When challenged about this stark contradiction in an ABC interview, he made it clear that his professional role must take precedence over his personal views. “I have got to discharge my responsibilities as Environment Minister—not on the basis of a personal view one way or the other.” Later in a retrospective view of his time in government he said “in politics, you have to compromise and be accountable in a way that you just don't have to when you're an activist"

This transformation illustrates a core principle of Contextual Behavioural Science (CBS): context powerfully shapes behaviour, sometimes overwhelming even the most deeply-held personal values.

Think of it like the famous colour contrast illusion where identical grey squares appear dramatically different when placed against contrasting backgrounds. Just as our perception of the squares is transformed by their surroundings, our behaviour is profoundly shaped by the contexts we inhabit. What looks like a change in the person is often actually a change in the environment.

Figure: The regions marked A and B are actually the same shade of grey.

Groups as Powerful Behavioural Contexts

While CBS is often applied to individuals (as in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), its most transformative potential lies in understanding groups as behavioural contexts.

Teams, organizations, and communities aren't just collections of people — they're powerful environments that actively select, reinforce, and maintain certain behaviours while discouraging others. When we recognize this, we stop asking "what's wrong with these people?" and start asking "what is it about this context that makes these behaviours more likely?"

Groups shape behaviour through three essential processes that form the evolutionary mechanism of behavioural change:

1. Variation: What Behaviours Can Show Up

Just as biological evolution requires genetic variation, behavioural evolution in groups requires a range of possible behaviours:

• Context-restricting groups shut down novel approaches with responses like "that's not how we do things here" or "we tried that once and it failed"

• Context-expanding groups actively encourage experimentation and create psychological safety for new ideas

The first step in group improvement is ensuring enough behavioural variation exists to enable positive evolution.

2. Selection: What Gets Reinforced or Punished

Behaviours that appear then face consequences that either increase or decrease their future likelihood:

• Some receive social approval, status, resources, or other rewards

• Others receive disapproval, exclusion, or other punishments

A hospital might verbally praise patient-centred care but reward doctors who process the most patients regardless of quality. What gets selected is what actually happens, not what's in the mission statement.

3. Retention: What Becomes "Normal"

Behaviours that work in context become embedded as:

• Habits and routines

• Formal or informal rules and procedures

• "The way we do things around here"

Groups retain patterns that worked historically, even if they no longer serve the current purpose. This is how dysfunctional contexts perpetuate themselves.

Why This Matters: Moving Beyond Common Traps

Most approaches to improving groups fail because they ignore the contextual nature of behaviour:

🚫 Blaming "bad apples": A hospital attributes high infection rates to "careless nurses" rather than examining how their understaffing and rushed schedules make proper hand hygiene nearly impossible to follow consistently.

🚫 Vague talk about "culture": A tech company declares they have a "toxic culture" but fails to identify the specific behaviors being reinforced, like managers who receive promotions despite bullying team members because they deliver results on deadline.

🚫 Relying on values statements: A university proudly displays its commitment to "innovation and risk-taking" while maintaining a tenure process that punishes professors who deviate from traditional research methods.

🚫 Focusing solely on training: A manufacturing team continues sending employees to quality control training while ignoring that the bonus structure rewards quantity over quality.

These approaches fail because they don't address the fundamental contextual mechanisms that shape behaviour.

The Contextual Approach to Group Improvement

To improve any group using contextual behavioural science, we need to:

1. Analyse the current context: What behaviours are currently being selected for or against? What consequences (formal and informal) are shaping what people do?

2. Expand variation: Create psychological safety for trying new approaches and intentionally explore alternatives to current patterns.

3. Modify selection pressures: Change the consequences so that behaviours aligned with the group's purpose are reinforced, while misaligned behaviours receive feedback or go unrewarded.

4. Create retention systems: Build structures that sustain helpful behaviours through processes, policies, or regular practices.

A Practical Example

Consider a team that says they value collaboration but struggle with siloed work:

• Traditional approach: Run team-building exercises and remind people to collaborate more.

• Contextual approach: Analyse what's currently reinforcing siloed work (Individual performance metrics? Recognition practices that spotlight solo contributors?). Then, redesign these contextual elements to select for collaborative behaviours instead (Joint goals? Rewards for cross-functional work? Public recognition of successful collaborations?).

The contextual approach targets the selection mechanisms that maintain the current behaviour, rather than just exhorting people to change.

What's Next: Becoming a Contextual Thinker

In future posts, we'll apply contextual behavioural science to enhancing cooperation in groups through processes such as: aligning around shared purpose, improving equity, distributing power and resolving conflicts more effectively.

If you want to move beyond superficial fixes to create lasting change in teams and organizations, learning to think contextually is one of your most powerful tools.

— Paul

Subscribe now to learn more about applying CBS to enhancing trust and collaboration in relationships and groups.

I would love to hear from you: What gets rewarded (either formally or informally) in a group you're part of? Does that reward system help or hinder the group's goals?