Robert Frank Weiss

Altruism Is Rewarding

People will learn an instrumental conditioned response, the reward for which is the deliverance of another human being from suffering.

Human agency and associative learning: Pavlovian principles govern social process in causal relationship detection.

Estimates of a workers causal relationship (CR) to production obeyed associative principles, despite the participants’ a priori beliefs that workers are responsible or “at cause” for production. In three experiments, social analogues of conditioned stimuli (workers) and unconditioned stimuli (company production information) were manipulated in familiar Pavlovian paradigms. The findings included (1) CR acquisition, (2) unconditioned stimulus-intensity effects, and (3) CR blocking. The research plan employed an approach that Neal Miller (1959) termed “extension of liberalized S-R theory” and drew on the Rescorla-Wagner model to integrate the experimental results, to illuminate the empirical data of social attribution research, and to guide the study of causal relationship detection using social stimuli.

Social facilitation of attitude change

Classically conditioned attitude strength was greater for Ss who were conditioned and tested in the presence of an evaluative audience than for Ss who were conditioned and tested in privacy (N = 192, p <.05). Results were interpreted in terms of neo-Hullian theories of audience-induced drive and persuasive communication.

Interpersonal attraction as a function of amount of information supporting the subject's opinions.

Based on the reinforcement theory of attraction and its model (classical conditioning), amount of information given in support of a S’s opinions was found to be an analog of magnitude of reinforcement (UCS intensity). As the model predicted, varying amount of information led to significant differences in attraction (p <.001).

Partial reinforcement effect: The expectancy of reward on nonreward trials*

In order to determine the importance of the development of expectancy of reward prior to partial reward trials; rats were given 20 continuously reinforced trials prior to 20 partially reinforced trials (CRF-PRF) and compared to Ss given only 20 partially reinforced trials (PRF). Control groups received 20 or 40 continuously reinforced trials (CRF-20, CRF-40) to determine the effect of differing numbers of acquisition trials. Results showed that terminal acquisition differences were minimal in the run segment of the alley and that Group CRF-PRF was more resistant to extinction than Group PRF, and both were more resistant to extinction than the CRF-20 and CRF-40 groups, which did not differ from each other. These results were interpreted as supporting the notion that the expectancy of reward on nonreward trials during partial reinforcement acquisition is a determiner of the magnitude of the partial reinforcement extinction effect.

Disagreement-induced drive in conversation: A social analog of intermittent shock in escape conditioning

Participation in conversation in which S encounters disagreeing opinions is aversively motivated by the disagreement and reinforced by the opportunity for S to speak in reply. In an experimental conversation modeled on discrete-trials instrumental conditioning, instrumental response speeds were faster when conversation began with disagreement on every trial rather than on half the trials, as in escape conditioning studies of intermittent shock (N = 80, p <.025).

Drive effects on instrumental response speed induced by intermittent disagreement in conversation

Participation in conversation in which a subject encounters disagreeing opinions is aversively motivated by the disagreement and reinforced by the opportunity for the subject to speak in reply. In an experimental conversation modeled on discrete-trials instrumental conditioning, instrumental response speeds were faster when conversation began with disagreement on every trial rather than half of the trials, as in escape-conditioning studies of intermittent shock (N = 58, p <.005).

Classical conditioning of attitudes as a function of persuasion trials and source consensus

Conditioned attitude strength was an increasing function of number of persuasion trials and source consensus, and these two variables interacted so that the effects of source consensus became more pronounced as the number of persuasion trials increased. Results were predicted from a theory of persuasive communication in which persuasion trials are analogous to conditioning trials, source consensus is analogous to UCS strength, and probability of agreement is analogous to CR probability.

Sex differences in social influence: Social learning

Sex differences in social influenceability were notable for their absence in 28 social learning experiments in which sex difference data were previously unreported or unreviewed. Competition, altruism, and dyadic communication were the three substantive research areas examined. Analysis emphasized the role of repeated social influence attempts, of novel conceptions and manipulations of motivation and reward, and of realms of experimental law in which the underlying simplicity is integral and the integration is theoretical.

The Reinforcing Effects of the Recommendation in Threatening Communication

An instrumental escape conditioning paradigm was used to test the drive reducing effects of the recommendation in a threatening communication. Analogies were drawn between threatening communications and conditioning. Instrumental response speed was a monotonic decreasing function of delay of reinforcement: 0, 2, 6 sec (p less than .001). Each of the three delay groups acquired the instrumental response (p less than .001). Speed = 1/latency, automatically measured to .01 sec by a Lafayette digital stop clock. The Ss were 54 undergraduate males. A procedure was introduced to allow the separation and analysis of the drive inducing and reinforcing components of a threatening communication. Significant differences were detected between the reinforcing effects of communications (p less than .008). The results were interpreted in terms of the fear reduction model of persuasive communication.