Audit responses: responses maintained by access to existing self or coactor scores during non-social, parallel work, and cooperation procedures.
Making peer performance data visible can reinforce checking behavior, so plan group contingencies with that built-in effect in mind.
01Research in Context
What this study did
College students sat in a lab and pressed a button to "audit" their own score or a partner’s score.
The researchers varied three setups: working alone, working side-by-side, or working together for shared points.
They wanted to know if simply seeing the partner’s numbers would make people check more often.
What they found
When the partner’s score was visible, students hit the audit button more for both their own and the partner’s tally.
The extra checking happened even when no money or praise was given—just access to the numbers kept the behavior going.
The authors call this "social facilitation through reinforcement": the score itself acted like a tiny reward.
How this fits with other research
Thomas et al. (1968) showed that cooperation only rises when partners must watch each other to win; Pomerleau et al. (1973) adds that even idle peeking gets stronger once those numbers are there.
Finney et al. (1995) and Alwahbi et al. (2021) moved the idea into schools: they gave kids group goals where every peer’s count mattered and saw big jumps in social bids—same peek-and-work pattern, now helping kids with autism.
Jones et al. (1992) looks opposite at first—self-evaluation, not peer data—but both studies boost social behavior by making performance public; the difference is who does the looking.
Why it matters
If you post each client’s data on a wall or share team points on a screen, you may accidentally reinforce "score watching" instead of the skill you meant to teach.
Before using visible peer charts, decide if extra glances help or distract, and add rules or rewards that make looking useful for the target behavior.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Human subjects, mostly between 11 and 16 yr old, matched to sample for points that were exchangeable for money. An audit response was defined as a response maintained by allowing a subject access to an existing score on his own (self audit) or a coactor's (coactor audit) performance. In Experiment I, changes from non-social procedures (no coactor) to social procedures (coactor present) increased self and coactor audits. Since both types of audits occurred at about the same rates during cooperation and parallel work procedures, the increases did not depend on the subjects' response interactions. Although Experiment I did not demonstrate that subjects were comparing scores, the frequent occurrence of each kind of audit within a brief time period (interpersonal audit) did indicate that it was reinforcing to have both scores at the same time. These interpersonal audits suggested that the coactor's score increased self audits during social procedures. Experiment II supported this notion: relative to a non-social procedure, self audits increased more during a parallel work procedure when the coactor's score was accessible than when it was not accessible. Thus, increases in other behaviors that occur in the presence of a coactor, i.e., social facilitation, may also result from or be increased by providing a coactor's score.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1973 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1973.19-409