Another consequence of frustration is stereotypy in behavior-that is, a tendency to exhibit repetitive, fixated, behavior. Ordinary problem-solving requires flexibility, striking out in new directions when the original path to the goal is blocked. When repeated frustration baffles a person, some flexibility appears to be lost, and the person will stupidly make the same effort again and again though, experience has shown its futility.
For example, a white rat can be taught to jump to one of a pair of stimulus cards attached to windows, by so arranging the cards that the rat finds food behind the positive card but, is punished, if it jumps to the negative card. The positive card may be one with a black circle on a white background, the negative one a white background, the negative one a white circle on a black background.
The cards are so arranged that the rat knocks over the positive card when it hits it, thus, gaining access to a platform where there is a food reward. If the rat jumps against the negative card, the card does not give way. Instead, the rat bumps against the card and falls into a net. By varying the positions of the cards, the experimenter can teach the rat to jump consistently to the positive card regardless of which side it is on. The rat jumps on every trial to avoid a blast of air aimed at it from behind the start platform.
This discrimination experiment is converted into a frustration experiment by making the problem insoluble. That is, by arranging it so that each of the two cards leads half the time to reward (positive reinforcement) and half the time to punishment (negative reinforcement), regardless of its position on the left or the right; Hence, whatever choice the animal makes is “correct” only half the time.
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The result is that the rat, forced to jump, tends to form a stereotyped habit of jumping regularly to one side (either to the right or to the left) and no longer pays attention to which card is exposed. The rat is still rewarded half the time and punished half the time after having adopted this stereotyped habit.
Once the stereotyped habit has been adopted, it is very resistant to change-so much so that it has called an “abnormal fixation”. For example, it the rat that has come to jump regularly to the right is now punished on every jump, it may continue to jump to the right for as many as 200 trials, even though the left window remains open as an easy and safe alternative. The behavior is so stereotyped that psychologically the alternative no longer exists for the rat.
Further studies must be made before we know just what analogies are permissible between human behavior and these experimental result. It is quite possible that some forms of persistent behavior, such as thumb-sucking in young children or stuttering, have become fixated because punishment and repeated frustration have intensified the undesirable responses. The persistence of difficulties in arithmetic and reading among some bright children also may be explained in part as a consequence of errors stereotyped by early frustration.