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

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.