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Abstract

A 2-person tutoring task was used to investigate the possibility that one individual's nonverbal reinforcers can be used in an attempt to gain information from the other person. Information- seeking behavior is increased by expectancy-violation (Brickman, 1972). Increasing a reinforcer's occurrance by violating an expectancy would suggest that the reinforcer also serves to gain information. A nonverbal reinforcer, head nodding, was monitored in a 2 x 2 design orthogonally manipulating (1) instructed expectancies of "good" vs. "poor" perfor mance by a confederate-student and (2) "good" vs. "poor" actual perfor mance. Violating subject-tutors' expectancies resulted in significantly greater head nodding. Also, a hypothesized lack of relationship was found between task-specific behaviors (informative comments and praise) and head nodding, not required to perform the task.

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Information-Gathering Properties of a Nonverbal Reinforcer: An Effect of Expectancy Violation

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