Attitude Statements as Positive and Negative Reinforcements

Abstract

The finding that attraction is a function of attitude similarity has been interpreted as a special case of the effect of positive and negative reinforcements on attraction. A simple discrimination learning task was employed in which the reinforcements were attitude statements similar and dissimilar to the opinions of the subject. The presentation of similar attitude statements after each correct response and dissimilar attitude statements after each incorrect response significantly changed response probability. The hypothesis that such statements could be used as reinforcers in a learning situation was thus confirmed.

Asymmetrical attention allocation to dissimilar and similar attitudes

“…Direct empirical support for our contention comes first from the discrimination-learning studies showing that similar and dissimilar attitude statements act like positive and negative reinforcements, respectively (Byrne, Young, & Griffitt, 1966;Golightly & Byrne, 1964). Second, the interaction effect of the valence of two social traits (Singh & Teoh, 2000) mirrored that of similarity and dissimilarity in two attitude surveys on attraction (Singh & Ho, 2000).…”

Conditioned Attraction, Similarity, and Evaluative Meaning

“…Both Byrne and Staats have found that words or phrases capable of classically conditioning an evaluative response are also able to function as reinforcement and punishment in an instrumental task (Golightly & Byrne, 1964;Staats, 1964;Finley & Staats, 1967 …”

How Personal Evaluation Affects the Underlining and Recall of Prose Material

“…This principle holds whether the attraction is determined by attitude similarity-dissimilarity (Golightly & Byrne, 1964), photographs of liked or disliked persons (Lott & Lott, 1969), inducing liking or disliking for the experimenter (Sapolsky,I960), or peer grouping according to inter-member liking or disliking (Lott & Lott, 1966). In the present experiment the attraction determining stimulus used was personal evaluation which has three times the impact of attitude similarity-dissimilarity (Byrne & Rhamey, 1965).…”

“…The principle also applies to many different kinds of tasks, to figure discrimination (Golightly & Byrne, 1964), verbal discrimination (Sapolsky, 1960), rote learning of a foreign vocabulary (Lott & Lott, 1966), and intellectual tasks (Krivonos, Friedrich & Byrne, 1976). In the present experiment the task required subjects to underline one sentence per paragraph in a prose passage consisting of seven paragraphs.…”