Control is one of the fundamental concepts in the study of the functional relationships between environment and behaviour, which are studied through the manipulation of environmental stimuli and contingencies to determine their effect on behaviour. For example, most approaches to modifying pupils' behaviour require teachers, through encouragement and motivation, to control their behaviour in some way. But what if the pupil perceives the educator's encouragement as an attempt to control his behaviour? Surely the pupil will evoke an operant behaviour whose function is to escape (avoid) the adverse conditions imposed by the other individual (teacher). This operant behaviour has the function of extinguishing or punishing the attempt of one person (the controller: the teacher) to exert control over another person's behaviour (the controlled: the learner) by evoking countercontrol responses.

This paper presents the Countercontrol Rating Scale (CRS), which was constructed to detect behaviours evoked to extinguish or punish the attempt of one individual (the controller) to exert control over the behaviour of another individual (the controlled).