EFFECTS OF AGE AND RELATED FACTORS ON THE PAIN-AGGRESSION REACTION.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to R R HUTCHINSON.
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Squirrel monkeys were provided with a chain-pulling response which produced an inanimate object that could be attacked. In the absence of pain-shock, little or no chain-pulling occurred. When pain-shocks were delivered, chain-pulling responses increased. The chain-pulling response was successively reinforced, extinguished, reinforced, and again extinguished by presenting or withdrawing the opportunity to attack as the reinforcing event. Aggression appears to be a distinctive motivational state which is produced by aversive stimulation and which can be used to condition and maintain new behavior.
Punishment and escape were studied simultaneously by allowing a subject to escape from a stimulus situation in which responses were punished, into a stimulus situation in which responses were not punished. The frequency of the punished responses was found to be an inverse function of the intensity of punishment, whereas the frequency of the escape response was a direct function of the intensity of punishment. Both of these functions were obtained under three different schedules of food reinforcement. The strength of the escape behavior was evidenced by (1) the emergence of the escape response even when the frequency of food reinforcement decreased as a consequence of the escape response, (2) the maintenance of the escape response by fixed-interval and fixed-ratio schedules of escape reinforcement, and (3) the occurrence of escape responses at intensities of punishment that otherwise produced only mild suppression of the punished response when no escape was possible. This last finding indicates that a subject may be driven out of a situation involving punishment even though the punishment is relatively ineffective in suppressing the punished responses when no escape is possible.
Squirrel monkeys were exposed to brief tail-pinches in the presence of a cloth-covered ball. Attack was elicited against the ball as a direct function of the force of the tail-pinch. This finding in conjunction with previous findings regarding electric shock and intense heat demonstrates that several types of aversive stimulation can elicit aggression.
Attack behavior was elicited from squirrel monkeys by externally applied electric shock. The shock elicited attack toward other monkeys, rats, and mice, as well as toward inanimate objects, such as a stuffed doll, and even a round ball. A method of quantifying the attack behavior was devised on the basis of the attack against inanimate objects. This method revealed that the duration and probability of attack was a direct function of the shock intensity.
Shock-induced fighting between paired rats was a direct function of the duration of the shock stimulus. Continued presentations of the shock partially reversed this direct relationship.
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