Blog

The presence of a negative audience can be detected only in combination with a positive audience, since its effect is felt as a reduction in the strength of behavior appropriate to the latter. Obscene responses reinforced by a child’s playmates, for example, are punished by his family. So long as these audiences remain separate, no difficulty may arise; but both audiences together present a dilemma: responses must be either emitted and punished by one audience or withheld with, let us say, a loss of prestige with respect to the other. (pp. 230-231)