Effects of social reinforcement on dependency and aggressive responses of psychopathic neurotic, and subcultural delinquents.

Abstract

Psychopathic, neurotic, and subcultural delinquents were verbally conditioned to dependency and aggressive verbs under conditions of frustration and no frustration. It was hypothesized that neurotics and subculturals, in contrast to psychopaths, would significantly increase socially reinforced verbalizations, especially under frustration. Further hypotheses concerning each delinquent subgroup's selection of dependency and aggressive verbalizations were made. The results lent support to the major hypotheses indicating that (a) neurotics and subculturals significantly increased and psychopaths significantly decreased reinforced responses; (5) neurotics made significantly more dependency verbalizations; (c) subculturals made significantly more aggressive verbalizations; and (d) frustration effects magnified differences in performance among subgroups. A major obstacle to understanding delinquency has been that its referents are so numerous and diverse that as a behavioral concept it has had little precision. It has often been viewed both theoretically and empirically as a unidimensional concept, which it clearly is not. Recently, investigators such as Kulik, Stein, and Sarbin (1968), Palmer, Neto, Johns, Turner, and Pearson (1968) and Quay (1965) have developed personality and behavioral classification systems for delinquency in an attempt to reduce its heterogeneity. The latter approach delineates four major dimensions of deviant behavior related to delinquency: (a) the moral predatory, "psychopathic"; (b) the anxious, conflicted, "neurotic" ; (c) the deviant, value-oriented, but not maladjusted "subcultural"; and (d) the "inadequate immatures." Differences have been demonstrated between these delinquent subgroups in basic 1 This article is based on a dissertation submitted to the Graduate Liberal Arts School of Temple University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the doctoral •degree. The author expresses his deepest appreciation to the .committee members: J. H. Resnick (Chairman), H. C. •Quay, and D. Kipnis for their valuable suggestions and support throughout every phase of this research.

Behavior and personality assessment in men labeled adaptive sociopaths

“…In fact, almost every negative descriptor proposed by Cleckley (1976) has been examined by one research study or another. Nevertheless, the bulk of research efforts investigating the characteristics of antisocial individuals has been targeted on subjects drawn from problematic social groups including criminals (Hare, 1970;Lidberg et al, 1978;Widom, 1976), institutionalized juvenile delinquents (Skryzpek, 1969;Stewart, 1972), and alcoholics and drug addicts (Hill et al, 1962;Sutker, 1971;Vaillant, 1975). Conclusions based on such subject samples are biased by their extremeness and by the psychological, biological, and physical conditions under which subjects are found and data collected.…”

Eliciting effects of verbal and nonverbal cues on projective test responses.

“…The present study was designed to investigate the role of verbal and nonverbal E cues, using a standard verbal operant conditioning paradigm (Stewart, 1972) which provides a clear dependent measure of the reinforcement manipulations. Specifically, a standard verbal reinforcer (good) and two of the immediacy cues, eye contact and body lean, were manipulated by the E and their effects measured on thematic responses to the TAT.…”