Studies of fear as an acquirable drive: I. Fear as motivation and fear-reduction as reinforcement in the learning of new responses.

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Abstract
First, albino rats were given trials during which they learned to escape an electric shock (producing the primary drive of pain) by running from a white compartment through an open doorway into a black compartment. That this procedure established an acquired drive (fear or anxiety) was shown by the fact that, when the animals were given non-shock trials with the door closed, they exhibited trial-and-error behavior and learned a new habit, turning a wheel to open the door. When conditions were changed so that pressing a bar was the only way to open the door to the black compartment, they learned this second new response without electric shocks. Control expts. demonstrated that this learning was dependent upon having received moderately strong shocks during the first stage of training, and that the acquired drive was not functionally autonomous, but extinguished during a long series of non-shock trials. The following hypotheses are discussed: that response which produce strong stimuli are the basis for acquirable drives; that the drive and cue properties of such responses account for the phenomena which have been labeled expectancy"; and that neurotic symptoms, such as compulsions, may be motivated by anxiety and reinforced by anxiety-reduction as were the 2 new responses learned in this expt.

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