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The learning of self-criticism is represented as the prototype of a form of internalization in which the child replicates certain components of the punishments to which it has been previously exposed. The stimulus properties of these components, first presented in the responses of a model, attain reinforcement value when they come to operate as signals for attenuation of the child's anticipatory anxiety. The effects of a variety of experimental socialization paradigms are combined with an analysis of naturalistic socialization to illustrate the mechanisms in the acquisition of self-criticism. Some extinction paradigms are also used to examine the sources of its persistence. Both the motivating and the signalling functions of social punishment are described as being essential to its reproduction, while the rewarding characteristics of the model are seen to bear only a very tangential relationship to the phenomenon. The motivational antecedents and consequences of selfcriticism are considered to be independent of the cognitive substance that defines its evaluative character.

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