The effects of alcohol and extreme provocation on the use of a highly noxious electric shock

Intoxicated and nonintoxicated subjects were given the opportunity to administer a potentially injurious level of shock to an opponent who behaved in either a provocative or an extremely provocative manner. The provocative opponent attempted to administer high-intensity shocks to the subject. The extremely provocative opponent attempted to administer high-intensity shocks and the potentially injurious level of shock. The intoxicated subjects in the extreme provocation condition evidenced the greatest increase in the use of the potentially injurious shock. It was concluded that aggression is a function of the interaction of alcohol consumption and level of provocation.     

Perceived objectivity and the effects of evaluative reinforcement upon compliance and self-evaluation in blacks

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the effects of positive and negative reinforcements upon black college students. In the first experiment subjects received either positive or negative reinforcement from a black or a white Evaluator. Behavioral change (compliance) was greater in response to negative reinforcement from a black Evaluator than in response to negative reinforcement from a white Evaluator, while there were no divergent effects of Evaluator's Race upon compliance with positive reinforcement. The same pattern obtained in subjects' self-evaluations. The second experiment offered a test of the hypothesis that the objectivity of black Evaluators was perceived as greater than that of white Evaluators, and that a manipulation aimed at equating the Evaluators on objectivity would attenuate the effects of Evaluator's Race upon compliance and self-evaluation in response to negative reinforcement. These hypotheses were generally supported by the results.     

CS duration,amount, and concentration effects in conditioning taste aversions

The relative contributions of the duration, amount, and concentration of a taste CS were assessed in pairings with an ionizing radiation US in two experiments. Increasing the duration of the CS (0.1% saccharin) up to 9 min yielded increasingly better conditioning over a $\text{1}\text{2}\text{-}\text{hr}$ CS-US delay interval. When the concentration of the sacharin was increased, only a few seconds' exposure to the CS was necessary for near asymptotic conditioning. It was observed that the CS duration effect had not been identified earlier because most investigators utilize 10–20 min CS access periods. The role of CS duration in conditioning over a delay was discussed with reference to the probability of the memory of the CS being present at the time of the pairing with the US event.     

Effect of CS-US pairings on shock-elicited aggression as a function of US intensity

In two experiments with paired rats, the effect of superimposing CS-US pairings on a baseline of shock-elicited aggression was studied. Baseline shocks (3.0 mA, 0.125-sec duration) occurred at a rate of 20 shocks per min throughout each session. In Experiment I, each independent group of two pairs of subjects received (in addition to baseline shocks) US shocks of 1.0, 3.0, or 5.0 mA and 5-sec duration, each shock signalled by a 1-min CS. At all three US intensities, aggression increased during the CS. In Experiment II, pairs of subjects received each unconditioned stimulus intensity in a within-subjects design. This procedure revealed a direct relationship between rate of responding and unconditioned shock intensity.     

Recognition memory for words and pictures at short and long retention intervals

In two experiments, subjects studied a long series of words and pictures for recognition. Retention intervals varied from several minutes to a few months. The complicated testing procedures in Experiment I required the use of a traditional correction for guessing to obtain estimates of subjects' memory performance. A comparable, but simpler, design in Experiment II permitted the calculation of sensitivity and bias measures. In both studies, pictorial memory was superior to verbal memory at all retention intervals tested, and this advantage was essentially constant over time. In addition, the experiments identified an increasing tendency to call verbal test items "old" over time. Bias scores in Experiment H revealed that subjects adopted a more lenient criterion in responding to words than to pictures, and increased leniency was noted for both item types over time. Explanations of the results are offered in terms of differences in initial encoding and of a loss of discrimination between experimental and extraexperimental materials.