Journal cf Educational Psychology

1972, Vol. 63, No. 5, 418-422

PERCEIVED REWARD VALUE OF TEACHER REINFORCEMENT

AND ATTITUDE TOWARD TEACHER:
AN APPLICATION OF NEWCOMB'S BALANCE THEORY1
DEWITT C. DAVISON"
University of Toledo
A 20-item questionnaire representing typical positive and negative reinforcing behaviors of teachers was administered to 256 eighth-grade
students. Subjects responded to the questionnaire twice, once in reference to a "Best Liked" teacher providing the reinforcement and
once in reference to a "Least Liked" teacher providing the reinforcement. Subjects indicated their feelings about the reinforcement by
choosing from among five statements ranging from highly favoraable to highly unfavorable. The significance attached to the positive
reinforcement was related to subjects' attitude toward the teacher,
sex, and social class. The significance attached to the negative reinforcement was also related to subjects' attitude toward the teacher,
but not to sex and social class. The relationship of attitude toward
the teacher and receptiveness to teacher reinforcement was conceptualized in terms of Newoomb's balance theory.

In studying the effects of reinforcement

on behavior, the focus of attention has been
mainly on subjects' overt responses to reinforcement as the behavioral characteristics
of interest. Few investigators have been concerned with individuals' affective reactions
to the stimulus events which are intended
to reinforce their behavior. Yet, how they
overtly respond to these events depends in
part on how they perceive them and the
significance they attach to them.
In the present study, the significance
students attached to certain teacher behaviors which were intended to reinforce
them was examined in relation to their attitude toward the teacher, their sex, and
social-class background. A number of investigators have found subjects' overt responsiveness to reinforcement to be posi-

tively related to their attitude toward the

dispenser of the reinforcement (Ferguson &
Buss, 1960; McCoy & Zigler, 1965; Sapolsky,
1960; Simkins, 1961). The findings bearing
on the relationship of social class to reinforcer effectiveness are generally mixed
(Douvan, 1956; McGrade, 1965; Rosenhan
& Greenwald, 1965; Terrell, Durkin, &
Wiesly, 1959; Zigler & DeLabray, 1962;
Zigler & Kanzer, 1962). And although sex
differences in responsiveness to reinforcement have been observed in a number of
studies (Ferguson & Buss, 1960; Meyer,
Swanson, & Kauchack, 1964; Rosenhan &
Greenwald, 1965; Rowley & Stone, 1964;
Stevenson, 1961; Stevenson, Keen, &
Knights, 1963), these results are similarly
inconclusive, as the sex group found to be
more responsive varied with different studies.
1
This article is based on portions of the author's
The studies cited were concerned with
doctoral dissertation submitted to the Graduate
subjects'
attitudes, sex, and social class in
College of the University of Illinois, Urbana,
Illinois. The author is indebted to Norman E. relation to positive reinforcement only. In
Gronlund for the valuable assistance he provided this investigation these variables were exwith this study.
amined in relation to both positive and nega* Requests for reprints should be sent to Dewitt
C. Davison, College of Education, University of tive reinforcement.
Toledo, Toledo, Ohio 43606.
As noted, there is evidence of a positive
418

PERCEIVED REWARD VALUE OF TEACHER REINFORCEMENT

relationship between the individual's overt

responsiveness to positive reinforcement and
his attitude toward the dispenser of the reinforcement. However, the dynamics of this
relationship have been given scarce attention
in the literature. One of the ways it may be
conceptualized is in terms of Newcomb's
(1953) balance theory. His basic paradigm
involves the co-orientation of two individuals
(A and B) with respect to each other, and a
third concept (X) which may be any person,
object, event, or idea. The attitude of Person
A toward X is conjointly related to A's
attitude toward B and his perception of B's
attitude toward X. An individual tends to
agree with those toward whom he holds a
positive attitude and to disagree with those
toward whom he holds a negative attitude.
With reference to the problem described, if
the student has a positive attitude toward
the teacher, he tends to agree with the
spirit that he perceives is being held by the
teacher in offering the reinforcement. On the
contrary, if he has a negative attitude toward
the teacher, he is inclined to reject, to some
extent, the intent of the reinforcement, since
his unqualified acceptance of it would imply
agreement with someone he dislikes. It
should be noted that the terms "agree" and
"disagree," as applied in the context of this
study, do not denote opposite states, but
are used in a sense relative to each other,
and represent differences in degrees rather
than differences in kind. Thus, given two
attitudes by students toward teachers, one
positive and one negative, it was hypothesized that they would perceive the positive
reinforcement provided by liked teachers
as being more rewarding than that provided
by disliked teachers. Correspondingly, they
should perceive the negative reinforcement
provided by liked teachers as being more
aversiveand hence its removal as more
rewardingthan that provided by disliked
teachers.

METHOD
Subjects
The subjects for the study were 118 male and
138 female eighth-grade students from three
communities in Illinois. The communities were
predominately white and all had populations of
varying economic backgrounds.

419

Procedure
A 20-item questionnaire consisting of typical
classroom reinforcing behaviors of teachers was
developed prior to the study. Items for the questionnaire were provided by 77 eighth-grade students who were not a part of the sample for the
main study. The students were given a mimeographed paragraph describing common classroom
episodes which illustrated student-behaviorteacher-reinforcement sequences. The examples
included instances of both positive and negative
reinforcement and the associated student behaviors. The students were then asked to provide
as many similar episodes as they could think of
that they had witnessed. The teacher-reinforcing
behaviors chosen for items in the questionnaire
were those listed most often by respondents. A
complete description of the questionnaire and its
development is reported elsewhere (Davison,
1967). Twelve of the questionnaire items represented positive reinforcers and 8 represented
negative reinforcers. Subjects responded to the
questionnaire twice, once in reference to a "Liked"
teacher providing the reinforcement and once in
reference to a "Disliked" teacher providing the
reinforcement. The two teacher-referent conditions under which the questionnaire was administered were separated by 1 week, the order
being reversed for half of the subjects. On each
occasion, before responding to the questionnaire,
each subject was asked to select the teacher he
most (or least) preferred to have teach him, without identifying the teacher by name, and indicate
his attitude toward the teacher on a 5-point,
descriptive scale. The options on the scale ranged
from "I like him (or her) very much" to, "I dislike him (or her) very much." The results from this
scale were used only as a basis for confirming the
subject's attitude toward the teacher chosen. To
respond to the questionnaire items, subjects chose
from among five statements the one most indicative of their feelings about the reinforcing
behaviors in relation to one of the teacher referents. Following is an item taken from the questionnaire :
Suppose you were in this teacher's class and
he (or she) was busy doing something in the
hall, and your classmates became loud and
you tried to quiet them. If this teacher saw
you after class and praised you for what you
did, how would you feel?"
A. I would feel very good if this teacher did
this.
B. I would feel good if this teacher did this.
C. I would feel neither good nor bad if this
teacher did this.
D. I would feel bad if this teacher did this.
E. I would feel very bad if this teacher did
this.
Upon completion of the questionnaire, the
subjects were asked to provide certain personal
data, including their sex, age, and parents' occupations and educational backgrounds. The

420

DEWITT C. DAVISON

latter information was needed to obtain an index

of each subject's social-class position.

RESULTS
Each subject had four scores, one for
positive reinforcement dispensed by the
"Liked" teacher, one for positive reinforcement dispensed by the "Disliked" teacher,
and two corresponding negative reinforcement scores. The responses to the questionnaire items were assigned to three categories,
based on whether a subject responded positively, neutrally, or negatively to the reinforcement. The positive category included
Options A and B (see sample questionnaire
item), the neutral category included Option
C, and the negative category included Options D and E. In scoring the positive reinforcement items, responses in the positive
category were assigned three points, those
in the neutral category, two points, and those
in the negative category, one point. The
point values were assigned in the reverse
order for the negative reinforcement items.
There were 12 items in the scale representing positive reinforcers. Nine of the 12 items
consisted of social reinforcers and the remaining 3 consisted of material reinforcers.
The results on these three items were not
included in this portion of the analysis.
Therefore, for the items measuring positive
reinforcement, scale values may have ranged
from 9 to 27 points. Scale values for the eight
negative reinforcement items may have
ranged from 8 to 24 points.
The subjects were classified into three
social-class groupings, based on Hollingshead's (1965) Two Factor Index of Social
Position. Table 1 contains a summary of students by sex and social-class membership.
TABLE 1
NUMBER OF SUBJECTS WITHIN EACH SEX AND
SOCIAL CLASS GROUP
Social class

Boys
Girls
Both sexes

All groups

Lower

Middle

Upper

52
60

47
60

19
18

118
138

112

107

37

256

TABLE 2
MEANS OF POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT SCORES
Boys

Girls

Social class
Liked
teachers

Disliked
teachers

Liked
teachers

Disliked
teachers

Upper
Middle
Lower

24.84

23.21
24.77
23.81

22.94

25.96
25.50

25.18
24.70

22.55
23.57
24.00

All groups

25.43

23.92

24.27

23.37

The means of positive reinforcement scores

for various groups are shown in Table 2.
An analysis of variance of the positive reinforcement scores indicated significant main
effects of attitude toward teacher (F =
41.93, df = 1/250, p < .001), sex of subject
(F = 5.28, df = 1/250, p < .05), and subjects' social class (F = 5.72, df = 2/250, p
< .01). As predicted, subjects responded
more favorably to positive reinforcement
offered by "Liked" teachers than by "Disliked" teachers. Boys responded more favorably to the positive reinforcement than did
girls. There was also a significant social-class
difference. Tests of the means with Duncan's
new multiple-range test (Kramer, 1956) revealed that middle-class subjects perceived
the positive reinforcement as being significantly more rewarding than the upper-class
subjects (p < .01). Lower-class subjects
were intermediate between the middle- and
upper-class subjects in how they regarded
the positive reinforcement, and did not differ
significantly from either of the other two
groups.
The means of various groups for negative
reinforcement scores are shown in Table 3.
An analysis of variance of the negative
reinforcement scores revealed a significant
main effect of attitude toward teacher (F =
26.79, df = 1/250, p < .001). There were no
significant main effects on the dependent
variable due to sex or social class. In summary, when negative reinforcement was provided by a "Liked" teacher, subjects regarded it with more aversion than when it
was provided by a "Disliked" teacher. These
findings were also in agreement with the
prediction. However, there were no signifi-

PERCEIVED REWARD VALUE OF TEACHER REINFORCEMENT

TABLE 3
MEANS OF NEGATIVE REINFORCEMENT SCORES
Boys
Social class

Girls

Liked
teachers

Disliked
teachers

Liked
teachers

Disliked
teachers

Upper
Middle
Lower

21.32
22.26
21.48

19.74
21.36
20.69

21.44
22.70
21.80

20.72
21.16

21.05

All groups

21.84

20.85

22.19

21.06

cant differences between sexes and social

classes in how they responded to the negative
reinforcement.
DISCUSSION
It is widely recognized that how individuals respond to events is determined in part
by their perceptions of the events. Given
this relationship, it may be inferred from this
study that the attitude of the student toward
the teacher significantly affects the extent
to which he is able to influence his behavior
through positive and negative reinforcement.
Negative attitudes toward the teacher from
students apparently have the effect of diminishing the reward value they assign to his
positive reinforcement. Moreover, the aversive quality of his negative reinforcement
is regarded by them as being less penalizing,
under such conditions. The basis of their
resistance to reinforcement under these circumstances may be explained in one way by
the tendency of individuals to avoid orientations to events which align them with the
apparent orientations of persons they reject.
To accept the reinforcement in the spirit that
it is offered would imply alignment with the
source, and, to some extent, endorsement
of that source.
The sex differences that were observed in
the students' reactions to the positive reinforcement should be viewed with caution.
Related findings have been obtained in other
investigations (McManis, 1965; Rosenhan &
Greenwald, 1965). But other studies have
shown results inconsistent with these findings
(Ferguson & Buss, 1960; Rowley & Stone,
1964; Stevenson, 1961; Stevenson et al.,
1963). However, these studies concentrated

421

on the subjects' overt responses to the reinforcement rather than their affective responses to it.
Although a significant difference was noted
between two of the social classes in how they
responded to the positive reinforcement,
these findings are also not clear. The relationship between social class and reaction
to reinforcement may not be a simple one.
An examination of the literature reveals two
opposing positions on this question. On the
one hand, there is the view that the lowerclass child is conditioned by his environment
to value the intangible rewards associated
with the classroom less highly than his middle- and upper-class contemporaries. This
argument draws heavily on the works of
Davis (1941), Douvan (1956), and Ericson
(1947). On the other hand, there is the argument that since the lower-class child comes
from a background in which he has often
been deprived of social support, he develops
a greater need for such and is therefore more
responsive to it when it is offered. However,
the middle- and upper-class child's needs
for social support are satiated, by virtue of
their backgrounds. The principal exponent
of this notion is Rosenhan (1966). Considering both arguments, it is possible that the
outcome in this investigation relative to the
influence of social class on reaction to positive reinforcement was in part a reflection
of these two conflicting tendencies.
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