Can Social Satiation be Learned Vicariously?

• Published in: The Journal of social psychology 1977-10, Vol.103 (1), p.139-147
• Main Author: Babad, Elisha Y.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Indexing in process
• ISSN: 0022-4545; 1940-1183
• DOI: 10.1080/00224545.1977.9713303

An attempt was made to create the social satiation effect via vicarious learning. Second-grade boys and girls from middle class homes in a Jerusalem school observed other children being administered a short treatment in which the stimulus word Yafeh ("Good") was presented by E twice (low-satiation) or 20 times (high-satiation). Immediately thereafter, E administered to the observers a 75-trial binary discrimination task, to test the efficacy of the word Yafeh as a reinforcer. The control groups consisted of Ss treated and tested by the same E. A typical satiation effect (i.e., decreased performance of the group presented with 20 stimuli) was observed for the control groups, but no difference was found between groups of Ss observing the high- and low-satiation treatments. It was thus concluded that social satiation had not been learned vicariously. The post-treatment inquiry on the Ss who were observed by the experimental Ss revealed that these children were aware of the frequency of stimuli presented in the treatment. However, the cognitive mechanism hypothesized to mediate the social satiation effect-perceived lack of contingency-was not confirmed by their verbal reports.