The present paper explores vicarious emotional conditioning and some variables of dependency that may influence the rate of conditioning. Volunteer introductory psychology students were administered the Edwards Personality Preference Schedule using the deference and autonomy scales as criteria for classifying subjects as dependent or independent. Ten females and four males were randomly chosen for each group. All subjects underwent adaptation to a tone which served as a conditioned stimulus. Ten acquisition trials followed where each subject was exposed to witnessing an experimental stooge emiting pain cues to a fake shock. Six test trials were presented where the conditioned stimulus was presented alone. The measure of emotional reaction was the subject’s GSR. Mann-Whitney-U-Test was performed on the percent of GSRs elicited and a t-test on the GSR and BSR magnitude. The results indicated that dependent individuals elicited significantly more GSRs during the acquisition and test trials. No significant difference was found on GSR or BSR magnitudes. Possible relationships between introversion/extroversion and dependency/independency are presented and confounding variables are discussed.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/181353 |
| Date | January 1976 |
| Creators | Tecklenburg, Ken H. |
| Contributors | Goldstone, Gerald |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | 30, [7] leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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