Abstract
A systematic replication of Watt, Keenan, Barnes, and Cairns (1991) was conducted on two groups of Norwegian soccer supporters. The 24 participants were trained conditional discriminations for the emergence of three 3-member equivalence classes, when members of two of the classes were assumed to be part of the participants’ preexperimental history. The stimuli used in these classes were pictures or names of soccer players relevant to their own team or the rivaling team. Participants were trained in a linear training structure before the test. The test was split into three test blocks. Test Block 1, a replication of Watt et al.'s (1991) equivalence test, Test Block 2 an adapted generalization test and Test Block 3 an updated equivalence test. The results in Test Block 1 replicated what was found in 1991, but Test Block 3 did not replicate the same results. In Test Block 2, participants scored as expected and the response patterns were distinctly different between the test groups and the Control Group. Also, the time used to finish the experiment by the soccer team supporters were significantly higher than by participants who had no interest in soccer. This difference was also reflected in the reaction times the participant showed on the emergent relations in test blocks 1 and 3. A correlation was found between the number of expected scores on the questionnaire and the number of passes in Test Block 1. However, no correlation was found in the number of participants who passed in Test Block 3. The study by Watt et al. (1991) was not found to generalize to the context in the current study. However, the extended parts in the study had some promising results on how social categorization can be studied in the derived stimulus paradigm.
Highlights
A systematic replication of Watt, Keenan, Barnes, and Cairns (1991) was conducted on two groups of Norwegian soccer supporters
Because all participants were exposed to the same stimuli and training structure, these results suggest that the preexperimental history in Test Group 1 may have interfered with the conditioning of new relations
Preexperimental history did interfere with the emergence of equivalence classes almost all participants responded in accordance with stimulus equivalence
Summary
A systematic replication of Watt, Keenan, Barnes, and Cairns (1991) was conducted on two groups of Norwegian soccer supporters. The time used to finish the experiment by the soccer team supporters were significantly higher than by participants who had no interest in soccer This difference was reflected in the reaction times the participant showed on the emergent relations in test blocks 1 and 3. Social categorization can be interpreted into behavior analysis and expanded upon through the process of stimulus equivalence It makes it possible to look into if preexperimental history interferes with the emergence of emergent relations. Many labels have been used as social categorization, preexperimental history, bias, racial attitudes, stereotyping, social contexts, and prior learning (Adcock et al, 2010; de Psychol Rec. Carvalho & de Rose, 2014; Dixon, Rehfeldt, Zlomke, & Robinson, 2006; Haydu, Camargo, & Bayer, 2015; Peoples, Tierney, Bracken, & McKay, 1998; Watt et al, 1991). Preexperimental history seems to be a more functional term, because it does not refer to anything mentalistic and refers to the general history of learning for each participant before the experiment (Haydu et al, 2015)
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