Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology

1963, Vol. 67, No. 3, 241-246

CONDITIONING OF VERBAL BEHAVIOR AS A FUNCTION

OF AWARENESS, NEED FOR SOCIAL APPROVAL, AND
MOTIVATION TO RECEIVE REINFORCEMENT 1
CHARLES D. SPIELBERGER, 2 ARTHUR BERGER, AND KAY HOWARD
Duke University

This investigation evaluated the effects of awareness, need for social ap-
proval, and motivation to receive reinforcement on verbal conditioning.
61 male college students were reinforced with "good" for constructing sentences
beginning with "I" or "we." Awareness and reinforcement motivation were
assessed by an intensive postconditioning interview; need for approval was
measured by the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability scale. Ss aware of a
correct response-reinforcement contingency gave more "I" and "we" sentences
than Unaware Ss, who showed no evidence of learning. Aware Ss motivated
to receive reinforcement gave more "I" and "we" sentences than unmotivated
Aware Ss. Contrary to expectation, need for approval was not related to Ss'
reinforcement motivation or performance.

Crowne and Strickland (1961) have re-
cently reported that subjects with high
need for social approval gave significantly
more plural noun responses when reinforced
with "Mm-hmm" than did subjects with low
need for social approval. Since all subjects
who reported the correct response-reinforce-
ment contingency were excluded from their
analysis, Crowne and Strickland concluded
that:
the effect of the need for approval was mediated
at a level of awareness below that which the
subject was capable of verbalizing [p. 400].
Using essentially the same procedures,
however, Dulany (1961) found that verbal
conditioning occurred only for subjects who
interpreted the presence of Mm-hmm as an
indication that they should continue to asso-
ciate in certain semantic categories, and its
omission as a sign that they should change
categories. Increments in plural noun re-
sponses for subjects with these "reinforce-
ment for association" (RFA) hypotheses
were interpreted by Dulany (pp. 255-256)
to be mediated by "series associative sets"
and the transfer of prior verbal habits. On
the basis of Dulany's findings, it would have
been expected in the Crowne-Strickland study
1 and concluded that:
This research was supported in part by a grant
(MH-7229) from the National Institute of Mental
Health, United States Public Health Service.
2
Now at Vanderbilt University.
241
that subjects with RFA hypotheses and high
need for social approval would give more
plural nouns, while subjects with RFA hy-
potheses and low need for social approval
would not; and that subjects without RFA
hypotheses would not show performance
increments no matter how intense were their
needs for social approval.8
The primary goal in this investigation was
to evaluate the combined effects of awareness
and need for social approval on verbal condi-
tioning. A sentence construction task (Taffel,
19SS) was chosen as the conditioning pro-
cedure because awareness can be more
readily and definitively determined with this
task (Spielberger, 1962; Spielberger & De-
Nike, 1962) than with the word naming
task (Greenspoon, 19SS; Matarazzo, Saslow,
& Pareis, 1960) employed by Crowne and
Strickland and Dulany. The major hypothe-
sis of the present study was that performance
gains on the conditioning task would be
limited to those subjects with high need
for approval who were aware of a correct
response-reinforcement contingency. It was
3
Crowne and Strickland (1961) performed a post
hoc analysis of their data, taking into account both
need for approval and RFA hypotheses. They
reported that verbalization of RFA hypotheses was
unrelated to the plural noun ratios of their subjects
Dulany's contention that the verbal conditioning
of plural nouns is artifactual does not appear to
apply to the present experiment [p. 400],
242 C. D. SPIELBERGER, A. BERGER, AND K. HOWARD

also expected that need for approval would questions, given in Spielberger (1962), became more
be positively related to motivation to receive specific and detailed as the interview progressed.
The questions, and the sequence in which they were
reinforcement, since it has been demon- asked, were designed to elicit information regarding
strated that aware subjects who were moti- the subject's awareness while avoiding suggesting
vated to receive reinforcement showed better response-reinforcement contingencies. In order to
conditioning than aware subjects who "didn't assess motivation to receive reinforcement, the sub-
ject was first asked, "Would you say you wanted
care" about the reinforcement (Spielberger, him to say 'good'?" After responding to this open-
Levin, & Shepard, 1962). Both need for ap- ended question, the subject was required to choose
proval and motivation to receive reinforce- from among three alternatives ("very much,"
ment were expected to be related to perform- "some," "didn't care one way or the other") the
ance on the conditioning task for Aware one which best described his desire to receive the
reinforcement.
subjects but not for Unaware subjects.
RESULTS
METHOD
The conditioning data were grouped in five
Subjects blocks of 20 trials each, the initial block
The subjects were 61 male undergraduate students constituting the operant period. For the
enrolled in the introductory psychology course at analysis of the conditioning data, the sub-
Duke University who volunteered for an experi- jects were first divided into High and Low
ment on "verbal behavior." Subjects received credit
toward a course requirement for participating. All
need for approval groups on the basis of
of the subjects were naive as to the experimental their scores on the SD scale (median SD
problem and procedures. scale score = IS). Subjects in each of these
groups were further divided into Aware and
Conditioning Task and Procedure Unaware groups on the basis of their re-
The subjects were tested individually in a small sponses to the postconditioning interview. A
room by the experimenter, a male senior under- subject was considered to be aware if he
graduate student who was seated opposite the sub-
ject with a small table interposed between them.
stated that "good" had followed sentences
The stimulus materials for the conditioning task, beginning with i alone, with WE alone, or
which were the same as those employed by Spiel- with i or WE (these contingencies, if acted
berger (1962), consisted of 100 3-inch X S-inch upon, would bring 100% reinforcement); and
white index cards on each of which a different past that he became aware during the condition-
tense verb was typed. The pronouns I, WE, YOU,
HE, SHE, and THEY were typed below each verb. ing trials. This procedure yielded 16 Aware
After a brief conversational interview, similar to and 13 Unaware subjects with High
that employed by Crowne and Strickland, the need for approval (SD scale scores = 16 or
stimulus cards were presented one at a time in the
same order to each subject. The subject was re-
quired to make up a sentence beginning with any AWARE SUBJECTS
one of the pronouns and containing the verb; the UJ I 1p _ High NeedApproval
en ' i Low Need Approval
experimenter recorded the subject's pronoun and z
o
the object of the verb. Throughout the conditioning Q. UNAWARE SUBJECTS
llj o o High Need Approval
period, the subject could observe the experimenter's 10- o-o LOW Need Approval
face but not his recording activity.
In order to establish each subject's operant rate
for responding with I and WE sentences, the first
20 sentences (trials) were not reinforced. For the
remaining 80 trials, the experimenter said "Good"
O
whenever the subject gave a sentence which began
with i or WE. Upon completion of the conditioning LU
Z)
trials the subjects were taken to another small O
uj
tE
room where they were given the Marlowe-Crowne u. 4
(Crowne & Marlowe, 1960) Social Desirability
(SD) scale by a second experimenter who had no UJ
2 3 4
knowledge of the subject's performance on the BLOCKS OF TWENTY TRIALS
conditioning task.
After the subject completed the SD scale, the FIG. 1. The mean frequency of I and WE responses
second experimenter, a female graduate student, in the five trial blocks for Aware and Unaware
conducted an intensive interview. The interview subjects with High and Low need for approval.
 MOTIVATION TO RECEIVE SOCIAL REINFORCEMENT 243

above) and 16 Aware and 16 Unaware sub- TABLE 2

jects with Low need for approval (SD scale DISTRIBUTION OF AWARE AND UNAWARE SUBJECTS WITH
scores = 15 or below). HIGH AND Low NEED FOR SOCIAL APPROVAL
WHO INDICATED "VERY MUCH," "SOME,"
The mean number of i and WE responses AND "DON'T CARE" MOTIVATION TO
over trials for the four experimental groups RECEIVE REINFORCEMENT
is presented in Figure 1. After the random
Motivation to receive reinforcement
elimination of three Unaware subjects with
Low need for approval to provide propor- Need for "Don't Care" "Some" "Very Much"
N
tional cell frequencies, these data were evalu- social
approval
ated by a Type III analysis of variance Un- Aware Un- Aware Un-
Aware aware aware aware
(Lindquist, 1953) which is summarized in
Table 1. The significant Trials X Awareness High" 28 9 7 2 3 5 2
interaction, when considered along with Low 32 6 10 5 3 5 3
Figure 1, indicated that, irrespective of level
For one subject in the High need approval group, motiva-
of need for social approval, the number of tion to receive reinforcement was unavailable due to administra-
tive error in the postconditioning interview.
first-person pronoun responses given by
Aware subjects increased over trials, whereas
Unaware subjects did not show performance ship between need for approval and motiva-
gains. When the conditioning data for each tion to receive reinforcement was evaluated,
of the four groups were evaluated, significant a nonsignificant chi square was obtained
performance gains over trials (main effects (x2 = .477, df = 2) for the data of Table 2
of trials) were found for the Aware subjects indicating that these variables were un-
with High need for approval (F = 9.59, related. The biserial correlation between SD
df = 4/216, p< .001) and with Low need for scale scores and motivation to receive rein-
approval (F = 9.01, df - 4/216, p < .001); forcement (Very Much and Some groups
neither Unaware group showed any signifi- combined versus Don't Care) also was not
cant change in performance over trials. significant (biserial r .18).
Given the method by which the groups
Need for Approval, Motivation to Receive were constituted, it was not possible to
Reinforcement, and Awareness evaluate statistically the relationship be-
The number of Aware and Unaware sub- tween need for approval and awareness.
jects with High and Low need for approval However, the fact that dividing the subjects
who indicated "very much," "some," and with High and Low need for approval scores
"don't care" motivation to receive reinforce- into Aware and Unaware groups yielded
ment is given in Table 2. When the relation- four experimental groups of comparable size,
strongly suggested that awareness and need
TABLE 1 for approval were unrelated. Thus, it would
SUMMARY OF THE ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE OF THE
appear that need for approval was unrelated
CONDITIONING DATA OF AWARE AND UNAWARE to either motivation to receive reinforcement
SUBJECTS WITH HIGH AND Low NEED or awareness. When the relationship between
FOR SOCIAL APPROVAL
awareness and motivation to receive rein-
forcement was examined, it was also found
Source df MS F
to be nonsignificant (x2 = 1.611, df = 2).
Awareness (A) 1 199.502 7.135*
Need approval (B) 1 1.117 .040 Motivation to Receive Reinforcement and
AXB 1 .131 .005
Error (b) 54 27.962 Conditioning
Trials (C) 4 117.393 16.588***
CXA 4 27.816 3.930** Since Unaware subjects, irrespective of
CXB 4 .531 .075 their need for approval or their motivation
CXAXB 4 3.288 .465 to receive reinforcement, showed no per-
Error (w) 216 7.077
formance gains, only Aware subjects were
"t <.OS. included in the analysis of the effects of
**t <.01.
***P <.om. motivation to receive reinforcement on condi-
244 C. D. SPIELBERGER, A. BERGER, AND K. HOWARD
16-
Awore-VM.
UJ
o
scc.
: 10-
8-
6-
4-
I 3 3 4
BLOCKS OF TWENTY TRIALS
FIG. 2. The mean frequency of first-person pro-
noun responses in the five trial blocks for Aware
subjects who indicated "very much," "some," and
"don't care" motivation to receive reinforcement
and for the Unaware subjects.
tioning. The 32 Aware subjects were divided
into three groups; subjects who indicated
"very much," "some," and "don't care"
motivation to receive reinforcement were
designated the Aware-VM (#=10), the
Aware-S (N=7), and the Aware-DC
(N = IS) groups, respectively. The mean
number of first-person pronoun responses*
over trials for these three groups are com-
pared in Figure 2 with the performance
curve for the Unaware subjects. The data
for the three Aware groups only were evalu-
ated by a Type I analysis of variance which
is summarized in Table 3. The significant
Trials X Groups interaction, when considered
along with Figure 2, appeared to be deter-
4
In this analysis, the response measure was I for
six subjects who stated that reinforcement followed
sentences beginning with i only, and WE for the
single subject who stated that it had followed
sentences beginning with WE. These seven subjects
showed acquisition for the reinforced pronoun for
which they were aware of the contingency but not
for the reinforced pronoun for which they were
unaware of the contingency. The finding that the
subjects aware of reinforcement for a single pro-
noun showed conditioning specific to that pronoun
was consistent with previous results (Levin, 1961;
Spielberger & Levin, 1962; Spielberger, Levin, &
Shepard, 1962).
mined largely by the Aware-VM group which
showed a marked increase in first-person
pronouns over successive trial blocks. The
Aware-S group showed some increase over
trials while the performance curve for the
Aware-DC group was very similar to that
of the Unaware subjects. For each group,
the number of first-person pronouns given
in the final trial block was compared to the
number given in the initial (free operant)
trial block. This difference was found to be
significant for the Aware-VM group (i = 8.86,
p < .001) and for the Aware-S group
(t = 3.05, p < .01), but not for the Aware-
DC group (t = 1.12). A t test of the differ-
ence between the Aware-VM group and the
Aware-S group in the number of first-person
pronouns given in Trial Block 5 was also
significant (t = 3.26, df =15, p < .01).
Thus, subjects who wanted to receive the
reinforcement "very much" and "some" gave
more first-person pronoun responses over
trials while those who "didn't care" about the
reinforcement did not show performance
gains. Moreover, by the final block of trials
subjects who wanted to receive the reinforce-
ment "very much" showed greater increments
in performance than those who only wanted
it "some."
DISCUSSION
In the present study, subjects aware of
a correct contingency between the reinforce-
ment and their own responses gave more i
and WE sentences over trials than did Un-
aware subjects; there was no evidence that
Unaware subjects learned. Aware subjects
who wanted to receive the reinforcement gave
TABLE 3
SUMMARY OF THE ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE OF THE
CONDITIONING DATA OF AWARE SUBJECTS
WITH "VERY MUCH," "SOME," AND
"DON'T CARE" MOTIVATION TO
RECEIVE REINFORCEMENT
MS F
Source df
Motivation (A) 2 272.021 10.397***
Error (b) 29 26.163
Trials (B) 4 151.109 20.740***
BXA 8 44.252 6.074***
Error (w) 116 7.286
I***
 MOTIVATION TO RECEIVE SOCIAL REINFORCEMENT
more first-person pronoun responses than
those who indicated that they "didn't care"
whether or not they received it; the perform-
ance of the latter group was comparable to
that of the Unaware subjects. There was no
relationship in the present study between
subjects' performance on the conditioning
task and their need for social approval, nor
between the latter measure and motivation
to receive reinforcement.
On the basis of the findings of Dulany
(1961) and Crowne and Strickland (1961),
it was expected that Aware subjects with
High need for approval would give more i
and WE sentences over trials; Unaware sub-
jects would not show conditioning; Aware
subjects with Low need for approval would
not differ from Unaware subjects; and need
for approval would be positively related to
desire to receive reinforcement. The first two
predictions were confirmed by the results; the
finding that only Aware subjects acquired
the reinforced response class was generally
consistent with those of recent investigations
of verbal conditioning (Dulany, 1961; Levin,
1961; Spielberger, 1962; Spielberger & Levin,
1962). The finding that the extent to which
Aware subjects acted on their hypotheses
was determined by their motivation to re-
ceive reinforcement, was also consistent with
previous results (Spielberger et al., 1962).
The findings in the present study that
Aware subjects with Low scores on the
Marlowe-Crowne SD scale gave as many i
and WE sentences as Aware subjects with
High SD scale scores, and that there was no
relationship between SD scale score and
motivation to receive reinforcement, were
contrary to expectations. Although the latter
finding raises questions about the validity
of the SD scale as an index of need for
social approval, the basis for the apparent
inconsistencies between findings of the pres-
ent study and those of Crowne and Strickland
may reside in important differences in the
two studies with respect to status of the
experimenter and subject populations.
In the present study, the experimenter
was an undergraduate whose status did not
greatly exceed that of the subjects. It would
seem reasonable to speculate that individual
differences in need for social approval deter-
245
mine performance only with experimenters of
high status. Although the status of Crowne
and Strickland's experimenters was not
elaborated upon in their study, the incre-
ments in performance on the conditioning
task obtained by their subjects with high
SD scale scores might have been expected if
their experimenters were of high status, pro-
vided, of course, that some of their subjects
had undetected correct or correlated hy-
potheses. Marlowe and Crowne (1961, p.
I l l ) have demonstrated that the SD scale
score was an effective predictor of perform-
ance when the experimenter was endowed
with professional status ("My name is
Dr. I am a psychologist.").
All of the subjects in the present study
were males, whereas approximately half of
Crowne and Strickland's subjects were fe-
males. It has been our experience that female
subjects who become aware of response-
reinforcement contingencies are more likely
to act on the basis of their awareness than
is the case for male subjects. Thus, the
increments in performance on the condition-
ing task obtained by Crowne and Strickland
for subjects with high SD scale scores may
have been determined primarily by female
subjects whose awareness of correct or cor-
related response-reinforcement contingencies
went undetected.
Awareness was inferred in the present
study on the basis of responses to interview
questions asked after performance measures
had been taken. Therefore, it is possible to
consider verbalizations of awareness either
as mere correlates of performance or, as we
have considered them, as indices of mediating
processes which are indispensable to the
acquisition of the reinforced response class.
The choice between these alternatives, as we
have stated elsewhere (Spielberger, 1962;
Spielberger & Levin, 1962), would appear to
be inextricably tied to theoretical biases and,
hence, beyond the scope of analysis in
strictly empirical terms.
REFERENCES
CROWNE, D. P., & MARLOWE, D. A new scale of
social desirability independent of psychopathology.
J. consult. Psychol., 1960, 24, 349-3S4.
CROWNE, D. P., & STRICKLAND, BONNIE R. The
conditioning of verbal behavior as a function of
246 C. D. SPIELBERGER, A. BERGER, AND K. HOWARD
the need for social approval. J. abnorm. soc.
Psychol., 1961, 63, 395-401.
DULANY, D. E., JR. Hypotheses and habits in verbal
"operant conditioning." J. abnorm. soc. Psychol.,
1961, 63, 251-263.
GREENSPOON, J. The reinforcing effect of two spoken
sounds on the frequency of two responses. Amer.
J. Psychol., 1955, 68, 409-416.
LEVIN, S. M. The effects of awareness on verbal
conditioning. /. exp. Psychol, 1961, 61, 67-75.
LINDQUIST, E. F. Design and analysis of experi-
ments in psychology and education. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1953.
MARLOWE, D., & CROWNE, D. P. Social desirability
and response to perceived situational demands.
/. consult. Psychol., 1961, 25, 109-115.
MATARAZZO, J. D., SASLOW, G., & PAREIS, E. N.
Verbal conditioning of two response classes:
Some methodological considerations. J. abnorm.
soc. Psychol., 1960, 61, 190-206.
SPIELBERGER, C. D. The role of awareness in verbal
conditioning. J. Pers., 1962, 30(2), 73-101.
SPIELBERGER, C. D., & DENIKE, L. D. The operant
conditioning of plural nouns: A replication of
the Greenspoon experiment. Psychol. Rep., 1962,
11, 355-366.
SPIELBERGER, C. D., & LEVIN, S. M. What is learned
in verbal conditioning? /. verbal Learn, verbal
Behav., 1962, 1, 125-132.
SPIELBERGER, C. D., LEVIN, S. M., & SHEPARD, MARY
C. The effects of awareness and attitude toward
the reinforcement on the operant conditioning of
verbal behavior. /. Pers., 1962, 30, 106-121.
TAFFEL, C. Anxiety and the conditioning of verbal
behavior. /. abnorm. soc. Psychol., 1955, 51, 496-
501.
(Received June 12, 1962)