Byron A. Matthews

An Experimental Analysis of Rule-Governed Behavior

Contingency-shaped behavior is behavior directly controlled by the relations between responses and their consequences. But behavior may also come under the control of antecedent stimuli, stimuli in the presence of which responses produce their consequences. We find important examples of such stimuli in human verbal communities, which arrange contingencies that bring behavior under the control of antecedent verbal stimuli called commands, instructions, or rules.

Effects of Fixed and Alternated Payoff Inequity on Dyadic Competition

Two experiments investigated the effects of payoff inequity on dyadic competition when a noncompetitive alternative providing equitable payoffs was concurrently available, on the hypothesis that the maintenance of competition may be inherently no less problematic than that of cooperation. In Experiment 1, one person’s competitive payoffs were equal to (equity), twice (low inequity), or four times (high inequity) the other person’s during a 48-trial matching game. Frequency of competition by the underpaid subject was found to vary inversely with magnitude of inequity. Experiment 2 found a preannounced midpoint reversal of the beneficiary of inequity significantly weakened the inequity effect. Results are compared with those from similar studies of the maintenance of cooperation under inequity and are contrasted with those from studies using mixed-motive matrix game formats.

Temptation and the Maintenance of Trust

Levels of trust, defined by how far ahead in earnings each dyad member risked putting the other, were continuously monitored during two-party exchange. Two experiments investigated whether a bilateral punishment capability would enable trust to be maintained when a strong incentive to be untrustworthy (temptation) was introduced. In Experiment I (total subtraction), both persons were provided with a “start over” button that could set the other persons session earnings to zero. In Experiment II (partial subtraction), the start over button was replaced by a “subtraction” button that subtracted ten points from the others earnings. All pairs had previously demonstrated either unwillingness to trust or untrustworthy behavior during temptation. Experiment I found that the availability of the total substraction option allowed trust to be maintained in four of six pairs. In Experiment II, partial subtraction had similar effects for three of six pairs. A bilateral punishment capacity may thus facilitate the maintenance of trust under conditions that otherwise produce distrust and exploitation.

Human Responding on a Temporally Defined Schedule of Point-Loss Avoidance

Two experiments extended the investigation of temporally defined avoidance schedules to human Ss responding on a schedule of point-loss avoidance. Experiment I found that superimposition of a td-correlated added stimulus had no effect on response rate or distribution, while response-cost contingency of 1 point per response produced a decrease in response rate and an increase in failures to avoid 10-point losses. Discriminated responding was produced only by combination of the added stimulus and the response-cost contingency. Experiment II found that a high-effort response mani-pulandum was functionally equivalent to the response-cost contingency in behavioral effects. The results are consistent with Weiner’s explanation for apparent insensitivity of human responding to nonresponse contingency events and support the generic use of the term “cost” in exchange theories.

Availability of Communication and Cooperative Problem Solving in Dyads

The initial acquisition of a simple 2-person response was observed under 3 voice communication conditions, Free Communication, Cost Communication, and No Communication. All 7 pairs in both the Free and No Communication conditions successfully acquired the cooperative response; however, 4 of 7 dyads in the Cost Communication group did not. Among pairs that acquired the response, speed of acquisition did not differ by communication condition. An explanation in terms of the effect of cost on communication pattern is suggested for the unanticipated high failure rate among pairs in the Cost Communication condition.