Operant conditioning: Positive-and-negative reinforcement and punishment

In operant conditioning, reinforcement increases behavior, while punishment decreases it. "Positive" means adding something; "negative" means taking something away. Positive reinforcement adds a desirable stimulus, while negative reinforcement removes an undesirable one to boost behavior. Positive punishment adds an aversive stimulus, while negative punishment removes a desired one to decrease behavior. Here are examples so we all have a clearer understanding between reinforcement and punishment as well as how positive and negative affect each one. I'm a gym teacher, and I coach high school football. During strength and conditioning practice I noticed my team loves to do yoga at the end of practice. I want to reinforce perfect form in the workout room during strength and conditioning practice. I noticed my team did great today, so I decided to reinforce that by adding more yoga at the end of class. A classic example of positive reinforcement. I'm reinforcing perfect form during the workout by adding something at the end of the class, which is yoga. Therefore, it is positive reinforcement. Later on in the week I noticed that the team was still doing great strength and conditioning practice. I want to continue to reinforce perfect behavior and safe weight lifting, so I decided to make them do fewer push-ups. They normally do 50 push-ups at the end of class, but I decided to drop it down to 25 to reinforce the perfect weight training. An example of negative reinforcement. It's negative because something is taken away, which is the push-ups. I'm still reinforcing good form during strength and conditioning, but I'm doing it by lowering the amount of push-ups they have to do. A classic example of negative reinforcement (Skinner, 1953). Now that we have talked about reinforcement, let's dive deeper into punishment and the difference between positive and negative punishment. In punishment we are looking to decrease behavior. Punishment is the opposite of reinforcement; however, "positive" and "negative" still have the same meaning. "Positive" means adding something, and "negative" means taking something away (Cooper, Heron, & Heward, 2020). This week while training the football team, I noticed that they are starting to text during weight training. They were doing so great last week, but this week I decided that I need to decrease the texting behavior. I decided to use positive punishment. I told the team that I'm bringing the push-ups back up to 50 in order to stop the texting behavior. Adding 25 push-ups is adding something, which is why it is positive. I'm trying to decrease the behavior of texting, and since I'm trying to decrease a behavior, it is punishment. This is an example of positive punishment. Later on in the week, I again noticed that the team was texting and getting distracted on their phones. I decided to take something away in order to try to lessen this behavior of texting and being distracted on their phones. I decided to take away the yoga at the end of class. Because I am taking something away, it is negative, and because I'm trying to decrease a behavior, it is punishment. I hope that you now have a clearer understanding of the difference between reinforcement and punishment and if it is positive or negative reinforcement or positive or negative punishment. Reinforcement is when you try to increase a desired behavior, and punishment is when you try to lessen an undesirable behavior. Positive and negative is the means in which you carry it out. "Positive" means adding something, and "negative" means taking something away (Miltenberger, 2015). I hope you found this lesson useful and use it to increase and decrease desirable and undesirable behaviors. References Cooper, J. O., Heron, T. E., & Heward, W. L. (2019). Applied behavior analysis (3rd ed.). Pearson. Miltenberger, R. G. (2015). Behavior modification: Principles and procedures (6th ed.). Cengage Learning. Pierce, W. D., & Cheney, C. D. (2017). Behavior analysis and learning (6th ed.). Routledge. Skinner, B. F. (1953). Science and human behavior. Simon and Schuster. Spielman, R. M., Jenkins, W. J., & Lovett, S. (2022). Psychology 2e. OpenStax. https://openstax.org/books/psychology-2e/pages/6-2-operant-conditioning. PsychologyWriting

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