Maintenance of self-attributed and drug-attributed behavior change.

It is proposed that behavior changes which are believed to be brought about by oneself will be maintained to a greater degree than behavior changes which are believed to be due to external forces or agents. Within the framework of psychoactive drug therapy, a change in overt behavior which is attributed to cue's own efforts should be more persistent than a change in overt behavior which Is attributed to a drug. An experimental analogue of drug therapy is reported in which subjects (a) underwent a pain threshold and shock tolerance test, (b) ingested a drug (really a placebo), and (c) repeated the test with the shock intensities surreptitiously halved. All subjects thus believed that a drug had changed their threshold performance. Half of the subjects were then told that they had actually received a placebo, whereas the other beef continued to believe that they had received a true drug. It was found that subjects who attributed their behavior change to themselves (i.e., who believed they had ingested a placebo) subsequently perceived the shocks as lees painful and tolerated significantly more than subjects who attributed their behavior change to the drug.