Previous efforts to manage aggressive behavior have generally focused on the emotion of anger, as opposed to aggressive behaviors. Several small-N studies have explored the promising approach of contingency-based interventions (e.g., the effort required to respond aggressively; Zhou et al., 2000), but have produced mixed results. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine whether experimentally-manipulated response effort effectively attenuates provoked aggressive responding using a modified version of the Taylor Aggression Paradigm (TAP; Berman et al., 2009). Participants included 123 (40 men; Mean age = 20.9, SD = 4.6) randomly assigned to either a low- or high-effort condition, crossed with a repeated measures provocation condition. Aggressive behavior was defined by the level of shock participants selected for their increasingly provocative "opponent" on a competitive reaction-time task. Results indicated that increased response effort attenuated both the overall average shock selected, as well as the use of "extreme" shocks in response to provocation.

Mail questionnaires are a popular and valuable method of data collection. Nonresponse bias is, however, a potentially serious threat to their validity. The best way to combat this threat is to obtain the highest possible return rate. To this end, many factors that are believed to influence return rates have been empirically studied. One factor that has not been empirically examined is the impact of item response effort on return rates, where response effort is defined as the amount of effort that is required by a respondent to answer questionnaire items. The purpose of this study was to determine if the type of item response effort required to complete a questionnaire had any differential impact on the response rate of a mailed questionnaire. For this study, two questionnaires that differed only in the level of item response effort were sent to two randomly selected and assigned groups. The first group received a mailed questionnaire with seven questions that were answered by a simple item response type (5-point Likert scale). The second group received a mailed questionnaire with seven questions that required a more difficult item response type (short answer). A large difference between the return rates of the two questionnaires was observed, with the questionnaire containing questions that could be answered on a Likert scale having a higher return rate (56%) than the questionnaire containing questions requiring a short written response (30%). The results of this study provide evidence that the difficulty of item response effort affects the response rate of mailed questionnaires. The practical application of this finding is that researchers should endeavor to keep the types of item response on mailed questionnaires as simple as possible, to maximize response rates (unless, of course, the needed information can only be elicited by providing written responses).

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Behavioral momentum theory (BMT) has become a prominent method of studying the effects of reinforcement on operant behavior. BMT represents a departure from the Skinnerian tradition in that it identifies the strength of responding with its resistance to change. Like in many other operant research paradigms, however, responses are considered to be momentary phenomena and so little attention has been paid to non-rate dimensions of responding. The current study takes up the question of whether or not the degree of effort defining a discriminated operant class has any meaningful effect on its resistance to change. Using a force transducer, rats responded on a two-component multiple VI 60-s VI 60-s schedule where each component was correlated with a different force requirement. Resistance to change was tested through prefeeding and extinction. Proportional declines in response rate were equal across components during all disruption tests. Differentiated response classes remained intact throughout. The negative result suggests several future research directions.