Social Encounters: Research

Howard M. Rosenfeld

Non-Verbal Reciprocation of Approval: An Experimental Analysis

Several classes of verbal and non-verbal response have been employed effectively as social reinforcers in experiments on verbal conditioning. Recent research on three such categories - smiles, positive head nods and brief verbal recognitions such as 'mm-hmm' - has indicated that they play similar roles in free social interaction. These responses were more often emitted by subjects motivated to seek approval from peers than by control groups; and the response tended to bring about approving reactions from the peers to whom they were directed. A less expected finding was that when pairs of unaquainted peers were observed in free interaction, the rates of performance of the non-verbal approval-related responses by the two members of dyads were significantly intercorrelated. Smiles occoured at highly similar levels within the dyad during initial acquaintance periods and maintaind at this high simplicity over repeated encounters.