Effects of response requirement and alcohol on human aggressive responding.

The team asked adults to press a button that delivered an annoying noise to another person.

Each press needed more and more presses before it worked — FR 10, then 30, then 50.

After baseline, the same adults drank alcohol or a placebo and repeated the task.

The goal: see if harder work and booze change how often people choose to act aggressively.

When the button needed 30 or 50 presses, most people quit early — aggression dropped.

Alcohol made the drop even bigger for people who already slowed down under big ratios.

One participant bucked the trend: alcohol raised his button pressing when the ratio was small.

Bottom line: effort can shut down aggression, but alcohol twists the effect in opposite ways.

Bhaumik et al. (2008) saw the opposite in pigeons: bigger FR schedules made birds peck more at a target bird, not less. The clash is only skin-deep — the birds’ attack was induced by the food schedule itself, while the humans’ button pressing was punished by the work requirement, so higher effort suppressed it.

Rider (1980) and Rapport et al. (1982) already showed that humans slow down and pause longer when FR size grows. Demello et al. (1992) extend those basic findings to socially maintained aggression, proving the rule holds even when the reinforcer is hurting someone.

Meisch et al. (2016) used concurrent FR schedules with alcohol self-administration and found that larger ratios can flip preference between drinks. The 1992 paper mirrors this sensitivity: ratio size steered choice away from aggression, and alcohol amplified that steering.

If a client’s problem behavior is maintained by social feedback, raising the response cost may quickly reduce it. Watch for individual quirks — a small dose of alcohol or a long day can flip the effect. Try thinning reinforcement schedules or adding response steps before the payoff, and track who stays safe when the work gets hard.