Social Behavior Mapping
Making the invisible social rule visible, one cause and effect at a time.
Adapted from Michelle Garcia Winner (founder of Social Thinking®), this template helps a student see the connection between what they do and what happens next, both socially and internally. It works because it doesn't lecture; it walks the student through their own chain of cause and effect, one arrow at a time.
The map starts by naming the expected behavior for a specific situation, then moves through four connected columns:
- My Behavior (Expected or Unexpected): what the student actually did in that situation
- How It Made Others Feel: the emotional impact of that behavior on the people around them
- How Others Reacted to Me: the specific response that feeling produced
- How I Felt About Myself: the student's own emotional outcome, closing the loop back to them
Walking through all four columns for both an expected and an unexpected version of the same situation is often the most powerful use of this tool, it lets a student directly compare two chains of cause and effect and see, in their own words, why the expected behavior leads somewhere better.
Download the Social Behavior Mapping Template
In Behavior Advantage: Use completed maps as evidence of a student's growing self-awareness when documenting Teaching strategies in a BIP, or as a concrete replacement-skill activity tied to the Function identified in the FBA Tab.