The role of schedules of reinforcement in the experimental analysis of social behavior.

Abstract

In this paper, we review some results produced by our research group regarding the role of schedules of reinforcement in social behavior. We discuss data from studies in which we attempted to create conditions in which interdependent gains overlapped with individual reinforcement schedules so that these situations were more or less competitive and conflicting. We argue that normative rules about reinforcement schedules and interdependent reinforcement are crucial for analyzing social behavior since these rules allow us to differentiate the effects of individual and social contingencies or an interaction of both. Our analysis demonstrates that temporal criteria in social episodes may be especially relevant in characterizing social behavior. In these episodes, responding to someone who initiates the social episode (the follower's response under the control of the leader's response) can be characterized as responding in a simple limited hold schedule, or in a variable DRL schedule. Leader and follower behaviors may be united by interdependent reinforcement, but their connection is itself a single schedule of reinforcement.