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Examining the Moderating Impact of Plys and Tracks on the Insensitivity Effect: a Preliminary Investigation

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Abstract

This experiment examined whether the tendency for people to adhere to rules or instructions that no longer occasion effective action, depends on the: 1) source (self- versus socially-generated) and/or 2) nature (plys or tracks) of the rule. This was done by providing participants with either instructions (i.e., a ply or track) or no-instructions about the contingencies operating in a Matching To Sample (MTS) task. During the first phase of this task instructed and non-instructed contingencies overlapped. However, halfway through the task, the non-instructed contingencies reversed so that now instructed and non-instructed contingencies conflicted. Overall, the results indicated that after the non-instructed contingency reversal participants adhered more to 1) socially- as opposed to self-generated rules and 2) plys compared to tracks.

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Notes

  1. Note that terms such as (verbal) rules and instructions broadly refer to a set of (verbal) antecedent stimuli and are not technical terms that emerged from an inductive functional analysis (see O’Hora, Barnes-Holmes, & Stewart, 2014, for recent work in that vein). As such, we will use these terms interchangeably as a means to orient the reader towards a particular class of behavior.

  2. In the current experiment we also manipulated the initial accuracy of the rules or instructions (i.e., ply and track). A total of 75 participants were initially recruited (54 women; mean age = 23.68 years, SD = 6.73, age range 18–60). All participants were randomly allocated (i.e., by drawing a piece of paper with participant numbers from a bag) to one of the five experimental groups: the initially accurate ply (N = 15), initially accurate track (N = 17), initially inaccurate ply (N = 15), initially inaccurate track (N = 15) or no-instructions group (N = 13). In this paper, we will only discuss the procedure used and the results obtained from the initially accurate instructions and the no-instructions groups. An outline of the procedure that was used in the initially inaccurate instruction groups as well as the results obtained from those groups can be obtained upon request from the first author (AK).

  3. See Appendix Table 2 for the proportion of MLCS selections for each participant during blocks 1–6.

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Funding

The preparation of this paper was made possible with the support of the Ghent University Grant BOF16/MET_V/002 and the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Program initiated by the Belgian Science Policy Office (IUAPVII/33).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Experimental-Clinical and Health Psychology, Ghent University, Henri Dunantlaan 2, 9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Ama Kissi, Sean Hughes, Maarten De Schryver, Jan De Houwer & Geert Crombez

  2. Center for Pain Research, The University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath, BA2 7AY, UK

    Geert Crombez

Authors
  1. Ama Kissi
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  2. Sean Hughes
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  3. Maarten De Schryver
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  4. Jan De Houwer
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  5. Geert Crombez
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Correspondence to Ama Kissi.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed with the (human) participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Appendex

Appendex

Table 2 Mean proportion of most-like comparison stimulus selections for each participant during blocks 1–6
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Kissi, A., Hughes, S., De Schryver, M. et al. Examining the Moderating Impact of Plys and Tracks on the Insensitivity Effect: a Preliminary Investigation. Psychol Rec 68, 431–440 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40732-018-0286-z

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