The effect of justifications on rule-following behavior after a history of reinforcement for not following rules was evaluated. Ten children were submitted to a matching to sample procedure such as the task was to touch one of two comparison stimuli in the presence of a contextual stimulus. In Conditions 1 and 2, the Phases 1, 2, and 4 begun with the presentation of an instruction that was discrepant to the contingencies; following the rule lead to the loss of tokens. In Phase 3 it was presented an instruction corresponding to the contingencies, with a justification for following the instruction that lead to the loss of tokens. The difference of Conditions 1 and 2 was only regarding to the justification presented in Phase 3. The justification presented in Condition 1 was "to help poor children" and in Condition 2 a justification regarding experimenter's approval. The behavior of 9 out of 10 participants was under control of the experimental history of reinforcement for not following instructions and of the immediate consequences produced by the behavior of not following instructions; the behavior of one participant was under control of the justification for following the corresponding instruction.
Rule-governed behavior; experimental histories; social justifications; reinforcement loss
