Effects of informational input on the "social deprivation-satiation effect."

• Published in: Journal of personality and social psychology 1973-07, Vol.27 (1), p.1-5
• Main Author: Babad, Elisha Y
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Human; Satiation; Social Approval; Social Deprivation; Social Reinforcement
• ISSN: 0022-3514; 1939-1315
• DOI: 10.1037/h0034366

Suggests a cognitive interpretation to account for the inverse relation between availability of social stimuli and their subsequent efficacy in a reinforcing role. In this interpretation, the emphasis is on the interpersonal nature of the interaction between the child and the reinforcing person, the information the child derives from the experimental (deprivation or satiation) treatment, and the child's judgment of the E's reinforcement value based on the perceived behavioral contingencies in the treatment. In an experiment with 74 white middle-class 3rd graders, it was predicted that a deprivation-satiation effect could be produced by information input alone, and that this information (about the E's nature in reinforcing children) would interact with and modify the effects of actual deprivation and satiation treatments on subsequent performance. A 3 * 3 design was used, with information and actual treatment as the 2 independent variables. Ss were told that their E would usually emit the stimulus word "good" either a few or many times and were then given a 10-min treatment in which the E emitted that stimulus word either 2 (deprivation) or 20 (satiation) times. This was followed by a discrimination test under continuous reinforcement with "good." The dependent variable was the number of correct (reinforced) responses in the test. Results confirm the predictions. The implications of the suggested cognitive interpretation and its relation to stimulus-response formulations are discussed.