Effects of instructions, elicitations, and reinforcements in the manipulation of affective verbal behavior.

This study has concerned itself with the comparative efficiency of instructions, elicitations, and reinforcements in the manipulation of affective verbal behavior. Bandura has suggested that simple instructions to emit a verbal operant would be superior to the usual reinforcement contingency procedure in increasing verbal response rate. The results indicate that the instruction groups achieved significantly higher rates for both positive and negative emotional words than the reinforcement groups supporting Bandura's prediction. The elicitation group also exceeded the reinforcement group in the emission of negative affect words. It is suggested that verbal behavior can be successfully manipulated by procedures other than the usual verbal conditioning methods.