Why Is Reinforcement Used Over Punishment

2. Negative reinforcements – this also makes children repeat behaviour but in different ways e.g.: If a child does well in an exam therefore they don’t have to do their chores.

Punishment is a form of reprimand that is meant to suppress or decrease a behavior by adding a consequence or removing the stimulus.

The mere mention of the word punishment as in the origin of the word make most people think of causing pain when in fact negative punishment is very different from corporal punishment. Corporal punishment is the use of physical force with the intention of causing a child to experience pain but not injury for the purposes of correction or control of the child's behavior (Gershoff, 2002). Behavior change strategies based on negative punishment involve taking away a desirable stimulus after a behavior occurs.

In chapter six in the General Psychology course, we learned about “Learning”. We learned the types of conditions that help people learn. One of the conditions is “Operant Conditioning” where learning is controlled by the organism’s behavior. During the lecture one thing that stood out to me was that in the operant condition, there is a term called positive punishment which is used to decrease bad behavior. It is used usually by parents to discipline their children when they misbehave in order to break that bad habit.

     Punishment is a process that decreases the likelihood of a behavior to occur again. This is not to be confused with negative reinforcement because it doesn't increase the likelihood of an occurrence. There are drawbacks to punishment. It doesn't teach an appropriate behavior to replace an inappropriate one. Also, intense punishment can lead to results such as passivity, fear, anxiety, or hostility. Finally, effects of punishment are sometimes temporary.

Reinforcement is used by parents, caregivers, and adults to show children the desired behavior. Positive Reinforcement avoids using punishment, yelling, degradation (Boyd & Bee, 2009). Reinforcement has been around for years and has been used around the world by generations of parents. It is a familiar term in modern society. There are many examples of research that support the positive effect reinforcement has on children.

Therefore, there is a requirement to expand the discussion about however reinforcement affects behaviour. Reinforcement is seen as: “an event, a circumstance, or a condition that increases the chance that a given response can recur in a scenario like that within which the reinforcing condition originally occurred” (TAHMDC, 2007). Meanwhile, Azrin and Holz (1966, cited in Skiba and Deno, 1991) defined penalty thus:

As they say, "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime", in other words, punishment is a repercussion of your illegal actions. Punishment, though, should be a crime in itself, done without any opportunity of redemption, leading society towards revenge, and with inaccurate judicial system.

Those strategies are so similar that both of them can be defined as “if you do this, you will receive this from me”. In the case of punishment, if you do something that you are not supposed to do, you will receive a punishment from the teacher or the institution. On the other side of the coin, if you do something right you will receive a reward from the teacher.

Learning through reinforcement is an effective method of managing behaviour, as everyone knows children love to be rewarded and praised ‘It is recommended that something positive is said to each child at least once a day and that the whole class is praised which is used to motivate the class towards achieving a specific behavioural goal’ (Grigg, 2010). If children show a favourable behaviour then they will be given something they desire (positive reinforcement) if children display unwanted behaviours then they will have something positive taken away from them (negative reinforcement), consequently all

Punishment refers to a response with an unpleasant consequence. Punishment unlike reinforcement decreases the likelihood that the response will occur again. Positive punishment is any stimulus that, when added to a situation decreases the probability that a given behavior will occur. If a child is destroying the house by painting the walls and the parent catches them doing this act. The parent may spank the child adding an unpleasant consequence and hoping this behavior will not occur again.

Reinforcement is the consequence of a behaviour that increases or strengthens behaviour (O'Donnell et al., 2015). Specifically, positive reinforcement involves adding something pleasant to a situation that when given increases the frequency of positive behaviour. Positive reinforcement can include; praise, privileges, attention, high marks, awards, public recognition, smiles and positive feedback. There are also unsuitable positive reinforcements for use in the classroom including food and physical touch. These have become unacceptable due to allergies and political reasons. Teachers are encouraged to use positive reinforcement within the classroom as it promotes acceptable behaviour (Reeve, 2009). Positive reinforcement is most useful when

One of the simplest and most commonly-used methods of conceptualizing learning is that of reinforcement theory (Noe 2010: 142). Every time a parent promises a child a toy for being good during a grocery store trip or threatens a teen with being grounded for bad grades, he or she is using reinforcement theory. Reinforcement theory is based upon the assumption that people want to experience as much pleasure as possible and avoid pain. Thus, businesses offer workers bonuses for good work, and issue reprimands (such as docking pay or denying a promotion) for poor behavior.

Punishment is the most powerful way to make people behave better because it shows them that their actions have consequences. Punishment is not telling people that they are special and being too nice to them. A teenager getting smart with their parents and getting grounded is a punishment that will help the teenager know to knock it off. Punishment is also necessary on a grand scale too. An example is Larry Nasser. He was accused of sexually assaulting young girls on the U.S. Olympic team and is going to prison. Doing something wrong should be dealt with by punishing the wrongdoer.