Group Contingency
A reinforcement arrangement in which consequences for a group depend on the behaviour of some or all of its members — the mechanism behind the Good Behaviour Game.
A group contingency ties one shared outcome to the behaviour of a group. In an independent group contingency, each student earns the reward by meeting the criterion individually. In a dependent contingency, the whole group's outcome rides on one student or a small subset. In an interdependent contingency — the most studied format — everyone must meet the criterion together for anyone to earn the reward.
Interdependent group contingencies are the engine of the Good Behaviour Game, one of the most heavily researched classroom interventions in existence. They harness peer attention, which usually works against teachers, and point it toward expected behaviour. The main risk is peer pressure turning punitive toward students who struggle — which is why well-designed versions use teams, keep criteria achievable, and never publicly single out individual students.