Toward a conceptualization of communication satisfaction

Need gratification, expectation fulfillment, equivocality reduction, and constraint‐reinforcement conceptualizations have been proposed for the satisfaction construct. Analysis and application of these perspectives to communication satisfaction reveal a number of serious shortcomings. A new perspective, the discriminative fulfillment approach, was developed to overcome these problems. The perspective defines satisfaction as the reinforcement of behavior associated with discriminative stimuli and suggests the investigation of performing and perceiving discriminative stimuli and producing appropriate behaviors and reinforcement.