Gossip as an effective and low-cost form of punishment

The spreading of reputational information about group members through gossip represents a widespread, efficient, and low-cost form of punishment. Research shows that negative arousal states motivate individuals to gossip about the transgressions of group members. By sharing information in this way groups are better able to promote cooperation and maintain social control and order.     

Effect of punishment on human variable-interval performance

Three female human subjects pressed a button for monetary reinforcement in a range of variable-interval schedules specifying different frequencies of reinforcement. On alternate days, responding was also punished (by subtracting money) according to a variable-ratio 34 schedule. In the absence of punishment, rate of responding was an increasing negatively accelerated function of reinforcement frequency; the relationship between response rate and reinforcement frequency conformed to Herrnstein's equation. The effect of the punishment schedule was to suppress responding at all frequencies of reinforcement. This was reflected in a change in the values of both constants in Herrnstein's equation: the value of the theoretical maximum response-rate parameter was reduced, while the parameter describing the reinforcement frequency corresponding to the half-maximal response rate was increased.     

Chlordiazepoxide and resistance to punishment

Rats were given intermittent electric foot-shock during food-rewarded alley training. In the test phase, food and shock were given on every trial. These animals persisted in running down the alley in the test phase compared to those without prior shock experience. The effects of chlordiazepoxide (CDP) on this learned resistance to punishment were examined using a long and short interval between trials. It was found that CDP abolished the effect at a long inter-trial interval, but left it unaltered if the interval was short. The results match those found previously with an analogous effect using non-reward. It is suggested that the effects of punishment and non-reward may be mediated by a common process, and that the benzodiazepines may act on this process.     

Intermittent punishment of human responding maintained by intermittent reinforcement

To determine the effects of variable-interval shock punishment on behavior maintained by variable-interval and variable-ratio reinforcement, human subjects' key-pressing behavior was reinforced with money on a four-component multiple schedule. Components 1 and 2 were variable-interval 30-sec, and Components 3 and 4 were variable-ratio 210. After responding was stabilized, response-contingent electric shock was scheduled on a variable-interval 10-sec schedule during the second and fourth components of each cycle. Subjects instructed as to the reinforcement contingencies showed gradually increasing suppression of variable-interval responding at increasing shock intensities and either very high or very low rates of variable-ratio responding at higher intensities. Minimally instructed subjects showed suppression at higher shock intensities, but no clear differential suppression as a function of reinforcement schedule. Recovery from initial suppression was observed within sessions.     

Resistance to punishment as a function of intensity and frequency of prior punishment experience

Rats with a history of intermittent punishment have been found to persist in the face of continuous punishment. It was predicted from an extension of frustration theory to punishment that increasing the intensity or frequency of intermittent punishment would increase persistence to high fear elicited by continuous punishment. Two experiments, employing 310 rats, verified this prediction for both intensity and frequency manipulations but indicated rather narrow boundary conditions for their effects.     

Race and vulnerability to stress: an examination of differential vulnerability

In this article the possibility of race differences in vulnerability to stress is considered. Structural models linking socioeconomic status, age, and life-change events to psychological distress are fit to blacks' and whites' data, which were obtained in a community survey of 829 Florida residents to evaluate differences in vulnerability. Life-change-distress paths were slightly larger among blacks than among whites, though not significantly so. The possible adaptive or coping resources provided by supportive social ties and by fatalistic responses to chronic stress are suggested as topics for further research with regard to psychological well-being among disadvantaged groups.     

Assessing vulnerability to suicide.

Three hundred members of the American Association of Suicidology (30% of those who apparently received the questionnaire) participated in a survey in which case histories of two men who had committed suicide and two who had not were presented. Respondents assessed the vulnerability to suicide of each man, recorded their levels of confidence in their assessments, and provided information about themselves. The two men who killed themselves were rated as less vulnerable to suicide than the other two men, and as less vulnerable than one would expect by chance. Respondent characteristics that predicted to accuracy in assessing vulnerability were gender and level of involvement in research. The findings are discussed in terms of the limitations of theoretical models as well as characteristics of the respondents and nature of the study design.     

Immediate and delayed punishment of human behavior by loss of reinforcement

Young adult humans pressed a key to obtain money. When responding was punished by presentation of a stimulus signifying that money was lost, response frequencies decreased and response latencies increased. Since these changes did not increase relative earnings, the aversive properties of loss of reinforcement were manifested independently or reinforcement gain. When loss punishment was delayed for either 10, 20, or 40 sec the extent of suppression was found to vary inversely with the response-punishment interval. Subsequent manipulations indicated that the effectiveness of delayed punishment was increased when the response also produced immediate conditioned punishment, i.e., a stimulus paired with the delayed loss stimulus. Instructions about the response-punishment contingency had similar effects. The findings were consistent with animal studies of delayed shock punishment, insofar as a similar delay-of-punishment gradient was observed, and with studies of delayed positive reinforcement, insofar as mediation through conditioned punishment (or instructions) increased the effectiveness of delayed punishment.     

Narrative self-constitution and vulnerability to co-authoring

All people are vulnerable to having their self-concepts shaped by others. This article investigates that vulnerability using a theory of narrative self-constitution. According to narrative self-constitution, people depend on others to develop and maintain skills of self-narration and they are vulnerable to having the content of their self-narratives co-authored by others. This theoretical framework highlights how vulnerability to co-authoring is essential to developing a self-narrative and, thus, the possibility of autonomy. However, this vulnerability equally entails that co-authors can undermine autonomy by contributing disvalued content to the agent’s self-narrative and undermining her authorial skills. I illustrate these processes with the first-hand reports of several women who survived sexual abuse as children. Their narratives of survival and healing reveal the challenges involved in (re)developing the skills required to manage vulnerability to co-authoring and how others can help in this process. Finally, I discuss some of the implications of co-authoring for the healthcare professional and the therapeutic relationship.     

On Russell's vulnerability to Russell's paradox

Influenced by G. E. Moore, Russell broke with Idealism towards the end of 1898; but in later years he characterized his meeting Peano in August 1900 as ‘the most important event’ in ‘the most important year in my intellectual life’. While Russell discovered his paradox during his post-Peano period, the question arises whether he was already committed, during his pre-Peano Moorean period, to assumptions from which his paradox may be derived. Peter Hylton has argued that the pre-Peano Russell was thus vulnerable to (at least one version of) Russell's paradox and hence that the paradox exposes a pre-existing difficulty in Russell's Moorean philosophy. Contrary to Hylton, I argue that the Moorean Russell adhered to views which insulated him against the paradox. Further, I argue that Russell became vulnerable to his paradox as a result of changes in his Moorean position occasioned, first, by his acceptance of Cantor's theory of the transfinite, and, second, by his correspondence with Frege. I conclude with some general comments regarding Russell's acceptance of naïve set theory.     

Learning due to the response-shock contingency in signalled punishment

Three experiments examined some of the parameters that affect the degree of response-specific learning in signalled punishment. Each of the experiments used a within-subject procedure in which the shocks received in the presence of a stimulus signalling response-independent shocks (CER) were yoked to the number and distribution of shocks received in a stimulus signalling punishment. Experiments 1 and 2 used different values of variable-interval (VI) or fixed-ratio (FR) schedules of shock priming, respectively, during the punishment stimulus, and Experiment 3 varied the delay of punishment. The results of all three experiments supported the conclusion that the degree of additional suppression produced by the response contingency during the punishment stimulus compared to the CER stimulus was a function of the strength of contingency between the response and the shock.     

A low-cost system for measuring and analyzing human movement in three dimensions

This paper describes a system for measuring the three-dimensional movement of a point on the human body. The core components of the system are an ultrasonic computer mouse (The OWL), an IBM-compatible personal computer, and a suite of recording and analysis software written in National Instruments’ LabVIEW instrumentation programming language. The cost of these components is sufficiently low that we have been able to create a system for measuring human kinematics that is within the reach of a typical budget for student practical classes.     

Adult attachment style and vulnerability to depression

The present study examined the role of adult attachment styles in differentiating ‘depressed’ and ‘non-depressed’ college students, and the association between attachment styles and the depressive personality vulnerabilities, sociotropy and autonomy. High scores on the fearful and, to a lesser extent, preoccupied attachment scales were associated with higher levels of depression, highlighting negative self-representation as a key factor in depression. While the sociotropy vulnerability construct correlated exclusively with the preoccupied attachment scale, correlations for the autonomy construct were more complex: as predicted, fearful attachment correlated with all three autonomy subscales while dismissive attachment correlated with the defensive-separation and control subscales, but not with the self-criticism subscale. With an emphasis on negative self-representation, preoccupied attachment also correlated with the self-criticism subscale. The results suggest that fearful attachment is consistent with autonomous vulnerability and preoccupied attachment with sociotropic vulnerability. Self-criticism, a component of both fearful and preoccupied attachment, is highlighted as a strong depressive vulnerability. Dismissive attachment, not involving the self-critical component, does not appear to be associated with depressive predisposition, despite involving self-reliance and avoidance of intimacy.     

Incentive shift in the rat following training to resist punishment

An incentive shift paradigm was used to test for the similarity of fear and frustration. In Experiment 1, rats trained to resist electric shock punishment showed neither a negative contrast effect nor any performance decrement when reward was shifted from 10 to one pellet. Experiment 2 replicated the basic findings of Experiment 1, but also showed that punishment training did not influence the magnitude of performance shift for animals receiving increases in reward magnitude. Finally, Experiment 3 additionally found that rats sensitized to punishment showed an increase in negative contrast effect. These results support the hypothesized functional similarity between conditioned fear and conditioned frustration with learned persistence or sensitivity to one generalizing to the other as suggested by Amsel's (1972) theory of persistence.     

Correction to: The irreducibility of collective obligations

Philosophical Studies - The article The irreducibility of collective obligations, written by Allard Tamminga and Frank Hindriks, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s...