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Demand characteristics in the satiation-deprivation effect on attitude conditioning.

1976; American Psychological Association; Volume: 33; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1037//0022-3514.33.5.553

1939-1315

Monte M. Page, Lynn R. Kahle,

Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification

A series of three experiments were designed to study the role of demand characteristics in a modified procedure that involved associating food words with nonsense syllables for groups of subjects who had either been deprived of food or satiated. Experiment 1 used naive subjects, and no satiation-deprivation was found. In Experiment 2, sophisticated subjects were run, and a satiation-depr ivation was obtained. Experiment 3 introduced contrast into the procedure in order to make the demand characteristics more salient. A stronger satiation-deprivation was obtained. In the two experiments where a satiation-depr ivation was found, important predicted interactions between demand awareness and performance were also found, which suggests the important role of demand characteristics in this situation. Results were interpreted as supporting a demand characteristics rather than a noncognitive interpretation of what occurs in an attitude conditioning experiment. In recent years a controversy has developed over the theoretical interpretation of the wellknown attitude effect first introduced by Arthur Staats (Staats & Staats, 1958). Staats introduced his procedure to subjects as an attempt to study the learning of two different lists of words at the same time. He then repeatedly showed the subjects a short list of words (nonsense syllables have also often been used in this procedure). After each presentation, a different spoken word was associated with the visual word. The spoken words, in reality, were not randomly chosen. One visual word was always associated with spoken words having strong pleasant connotative meaning, and another was always associated with unpleasant words. Other visually presented words were always associated with neutral spoken words. Following the learning procedure, subjects rated their feelings toward the visual words on pleasant-unpleasant semantic differential scales. Finally a single question was asked regarding subjects' thoughts about the purpose of the experiment. Subjects who indicated that they were aware of either of the systematic name