Persistent Rule-Following in the Face of Reversed Reinforcement Contingencies: The Differential Impact of Direct Versus Derived Rules.
Directly stated rules create stubborn behavior that survives payoff changes better than rules people must figure out.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Colin and team worked with 24 college students.
Half got direct rules like 'Press red for points.'
The other half got derived rules they had to figure out from stimulus relations.
Both groups practiced with points for correct choices.
Then the rules flipped — the old correct choice now lost points.
The team watched who kept following the old rule anyway.
What they found
Students with direct rules stuck to the old rule longer.
They kept pressing red even when it cost them points.
Students with derived rules noticed the change faster.
They switched choices and saved their points.
More practice with the first rule made the direct-rule group even more stubborn.
How this fits with other research
Peters et al. (2013) saw the same pattern in DRO tasks.
When rules were stated clearly, people followed them over the actual delays.
When rules were hinted at, the delays won.
Alonso-Álvarez et al. (2018) showed derived relations can be fragile.
Their sameness/opposite tasks fell apart when cues changed.
Colin’s data add a new twist: once a direct rule is locked in, even big payoff changes may not break it.
This extends the older equivalence work from Anonymous (1993) and Rapport et al. (1996).
Those studies showed derived relations form easily in labs.
Colin shows they also break more easily than direct commands when money is on the line.
Why it matters
If you give a client a clear rule like 'Stay in your seat to earn iPad time,' expect strong persistence even if the payoff later changes.
For skills you may need to adjust, use less direct wording or let the client derive the rule.
This keeps behavior flexible when contingencies shift.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Rule-governed behavior and its role in generating insensitivity to direct contingencies of reinforcement have been implicated in human psychological suffering. In addition, the human capacity to engage in derived relational responding has also been used to explain specific human maladaptive behaviors, such as irrational fears. To date, however, very little research has attempted to integrate research on contingency insensitivity and derived relations. The current work sought to fill this gap. Across two experiments, participants received either a direct rule (Direct Rule Condition) or a rule that involved a novel derived relational response (Derived Rule Condition). Provision of a direct rule resulted in more persistent rule-following in the face of competing contingencies, but only when the opportunity to follow the reinforced rule beforehand was relatively protracted. Furthermore, only in the Direct Rule Condition were there significant correlations between rule-compliance and stress. A post hoc interpretation of the findings is provided.
Behavior modification, 2017 · doi:10.1177/0145445517715871