Modified: 2020-03-27
Positive punishment is when a response is followed by the addition of a stimulus. That stimulus has the property of making that response less likely to recur. For example, let's go back to that classroom in the near future. Now, whenever you raise your hand, you receive a shock. Soon, you stop raising your hand. Note that this scene sometimes occurs in real classrooms. If a student asks a question and then hears something like, "That's the stupidest question I ever heard" from the instructor, that student will likely not ask many questions in the future.
Negative punishment is when a response is followed by the removal of an already present stimulus, and that leads to that response's occurring less often. For example, in that future classroom again, if you asked a question and one of your $20 bills disappeared back into the slot every time you asked a question, you would probably quit asking questions.
Although it might appear that reinforcement and punishment are opposites, they are not. Punishment arouses negative emotions, (e.g., hate, disgust, loathing). But, reinforcement does not similarly arouse positive emotions like love, liking, and attraction. Think of jilted suitors who asks why their partners left. They might wonder why their partners left even though they gave their partners expensive gifts. Those expensive gifts did not, in and of themselves, lead to love.
Interestingly, Black and White Americans harbor different views about the use and effectiveness of using physical punishment on their children. Black Americans are more likely to use such forms of punishment in child rearing. The effects vary too. Black children so punished tend not to have behavior problems in school while White children raised with such methods tend to be the problem children in schools.