Effects of Content and Intonation on Perceptions of Verbal Reinforcers

Abstract

College students heard 36 taped verbal evaluations (reinforcers) representing all combinations of three levels of content and three of intonation (positive, neutral and negative in each case). Ss rated each reinforcer on three 5-point scales concerning its meaning as (1) a comment about performance, (2) a producer of a feeling-state in the recipient, and (3) an expression of the speaker's liking or disliking of the recipient. Content and intonation had significant main effects and interactions for every rating, but their relative effects differed across ratings. Content was strongly dominant for judgments of “objective” meaning, and moderately dominant for judgments about the recipient's feeling, while intonation was dominant for judgments about the speaker's liking for the recipient. No sex differences and only slight age differences were found.

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