Punishment

Modified: 2024-07-02 1:02 AM CDST

• Punishment is when a stimulus that follows a response leads to a lower likelihood of that response's recurring.
  • Note that reinforcement, either positive or negative, leads to a higher likelihood of a response recurring.

• 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 you had to reeturn one of your $20 bills 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 ask 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.
    • White children raised with such methods tend to be the problem children in schools.