A limitation of the contrafreeloading phenomenon

Abstract

Two experiments were performed in an attempt to replicate first and then to generalize a contrafreeloading effect, i.e., that animals would rather work and get rewards than get the rewards free. The first experiment failed to replicate the earlier experiments with hungry animals and food as reinforcement, as only 3 of the 25 rats exhibited a preference for barpressing. The remaining animals demonstrated a prefere ice for the free food that increased over free choice days. The second experiment attempted to generalize these findings, using thirsty animals and water as the reward. The data were consistent with the food results; however, the preference for free water was even greater than that for free food. The results were viewed as suggesting that the speculations that animals prefer working to freeloading were premature. There