Interviewer's Locus of Control and Conditioning of Interviewee's Self-Reference Statements

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Abstract
An experiment sought to explore the relationship between an interviewer's perceived personal control and his effectiveness as a social reinforcer during free verbalization in an interview. The design was a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 factorial experiment. The experimental variables were the locus of control of both interviewers and subjects, reinforced response class, and sex. During the experimental sessions subjects were reinforced for the emission of either positive or negative self-references. The following results were obtained: (1) Internal interviewers were generally more effective than externals in eliciting positive self-references. (2) Verbal reinforcement increased the emission of positive self-references. (3) Negative self-references were relatively unaffected by either internal or external interviewers. (4) Internal interviewers had maximum influence when subjects were male. (5) Internal interviewers were significantly more confident about the quality of their relationship with subjects.

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