An exploratory study of the interaction between personality and psychopathology

Incentive theory: II. Models for choice

Incentive theory is extended to account for concurrent chained schedules of reinforcement. The basic model consists of additive contributions from the primary and secondary effects of reinforcers, which serve to direct the behavior activated by reinforcement. The activation is proportional to the rate of reinforcement and interacts multiplicatively with the directive effects. The two free parameters are q, the slope of the delay of reinforcement gradient, whose value is constant across many experiments, and b, a bias parameter. The model is shown to provide an excellent description of all results from studies that have varied the terminal-link schedules, and of many of the results from studies that have varied initial-link schedules. The model is extended to diverse modifications of the terminal links, such as varied amount of reinforcement, varied signaling of the terminal-link schedules, and segmentation of the terminal-link schedules. It is demonstrated that incentive theory provides an accurate and integrated account of many of the phenomena of choice.

MMPL profiles of men referred for a pretrial psychiatric assessment as a function of offense type

Gathered MMPI and demographic data on six groups of 25 men each who had been remanded by the courts to a maximum security psychiatric hospital for pretrial assessment. The groups differed according to offense type: Murder or attempted murder of a family member or girlfriend, murder or attempted murder of an unrelated victim, rape, arson, child molesting, or property. The MMPI profiles of the groups were remarkably similar, and the prediction that the murder family group would have the highest Overcontrolled Hostility scores was not supported. Multiple discriminant analyses showed that the remand's age on admission and whether he had been in corrections before the current offense were the best discriminators among the groups. These data indicate that the MMPI is not related to the offense types of mentally disordered offenders referred by the courts for assessment, but does reflect their relatively high levels of psychopathology.