Behavior Management

This is the negative outcome of certain actions, which is used to stop an individual’s propensity to perform such actions in future circumstances. In operant conditioning psychology, punishment is a term utilized to mention any change that happens after a behavior that lowers the likelihood that the behavior will happen again in the future. 

Both positive and negative reinforcements are utilized to increase behaviors, while punishment is focused on eliminating or reducing unwanted behaviors. Many individuals confuse negative reinforcement with punishment, but they’re two very different mechanisms. Reinforcement, even when it’s negative, always increases a behavior. On the contrary, punishment always reduces a behavior.

Psychologist B. F. Skinner, who first defined operant conditioning, recognized two different types of aversive stimuli that can be utilized as punishment. These are:

Positive punishment: This includes presenting an aversive stimulus after a behavior. For instance, when a pupil talks out of turn in the middle of a class, the instructor may scold the kid for interrupting.

Negative punishment: This includes removing a desirable stimulus after a behavior. For instance, when the pupil from the above example talks out of turn again, the instructor promptly tells the kid that he/she will have to miss recess due to that behavior.

While punishment can be beneficial in some instances, one can probably imagine some examples when a punishment doesn’t consistently decrease unwanted behavior. Prison is one such example. Individuals often continue committing crimes after they’re released from prison after being sent to it for a crime. 

Researchers have identified two contributing factors to punishment’s effectiveness in different circumstances. First, punishment is more beneficial if it’s applied quickly. Prison sentences often happen long after someone committed the crime, which might help explain one reason why sending individuals to jail doesn’t always result in a decrease in criminal behavior. Second, punishment achieves better results when it’s consistently applied. 

It can be hard to give a punishment all the time a behavior happens. For instance, individuals often continue to exceed the speed limit even after getting a speeding ticket because the behavior isn’t consistently punished. Punishment is more likely to result in a decrease in behavior if it’s consistently applied and immediately follows the behavior.

Punishment also has some major drawbacks. First, any behavior alterations because of the punishment are often temporary. Probably the biggest downside is that punishment doesn’t actually provide any information about desired or more appropriate behaviors. While subjects may be learning not to carry out particular behaviors, they aren’t actually learning what they should be performing. Another aspect to consider about punishment is that it may have undesirable and unintended consequences. 

For instance, a 2014 survey in the U.S. identified almost half of parents acknowledged spanking their younger kids (age nine and below) in the past year. According to researchers, this kind of physical punishment may result in aggression, antisocial behavior, and delinquency among kids. This is why Skinner and other psychologists propose that any potential short-term benefits from utilizing punishment to modify behavior need to be weighed against the prospective long-term consequences.

This is a rule that says that recreational activities that cause some form of pleasure can make individuals participate in activities that they don’t find fun. It’s a theory of reinforcement that suggests that a less desired behavior could be reinforced by engaging in a more desired behavior. The Premack principle is credited to its originator, psychologist David Premack.

Before the introduction of the Premack principle, operant conditioning held that reinforcement was dependent on the association of one single behavior and one single consequence. For instance, if students perform well on a test, the studying behavior that led to their success will be reinforced if the instructor compliments them. In 1965, Premack expanded on this idea to demonstrate that one behavior can reinforce another. 

He was studying Cebus monkeys when he noticed that behaviors that an individual spontaneously engages in at a higher frequency are better rewarding than those the individual engages in at a lower frequency. Premack suggested that the high-frequency, more rewarding behaviors can reinforce the low-frequency, less rewarding ones.

After Premack shared his ideas, several studies with both animals and people have supported the principle. Premack himself conducted one of the initial studies. He first determined if his kid participants preferred eating candy or playing pinball. He then used two scenarios: one in which the kids had to play pinball to eat candy and another in which they had to eat candy to play pinball. Premack identified that only the kids who preferred the sequentially second behavior exhibited a reinforcement effect in each situation. 

Brenda Geiger identified that giving seventh and eighth-grade pupils time to play on the playground can reinforce learning by making play dependent on the completion of their tasks in the classroom. Apart from improving learning, this simple reinforcer increased the time students spent on each task and their self-discipline and decreased the need for instructors to discipline them.

The Premack principle has become a hallmark of behavior modification and applied behavior analysis and can successfully be applied in different settings. Two areas where the application of the principle has proven particularly beneficial are dog training and child-rearing. For instance, when teaching a dog playing fetch, the dog has to learn that if it wants to chase the object again (highly desired behavior), it has to bring the object back to its owner and drop it (less desired behavior). 

The Premack principle is utilized all the time with kids. Many parents have told kids that they must finish their homework before they can play a video game or they’ve to eat their vegetables before having dessert. While it can be highly effective with kids of all ages, it’s vital to understand that not all kids are equally encouraged by the same rewards. So, caregivers must decide on the behaviors that are highly motivating to the kids to apply the principle successfully.

The Premack principle has several limitations. For example, an individual’s response to an application is dependent on the context. The person’s preferences and the other activities available to the individual at a given moment will play a role in if the selected reinforcer will generate the less-probable behavior.

This is an outcome that people appreciate simply because of its link to a primary reinforcement. Secondary reinforcement includes the process of conditioning or learning to understand its association with the primary reinforcement. For instance, food is a primary reinforcer, and money buys food. Therefore, in this case, money is a secondary reinforcer, and its value is relative to food, which is the primary reinforcer. While a primary reinforcer is biological in nature, a secondary reinforcer becomes reinforcing after being associated with a primary reinforcer, such as treats, money, or praise.

Key advantages of secondary reinforcers include:

•         More convenient to utilize than primary reinforcers
•         Fit better in natural environment situations
•         They can be utilized to expand the interest of a person
•         Utilizing a token economy system can expand the time between new reinforcers’ presentations without the person losing interest

Therapists, teachers, and parents often utilize token economies to motivate clients and kids to engage in adaptive behaviors. While they don’t have any reinforcement value, such tokens can be utilized to buy primary reinforcers such as candy, soda pops, and other privileges. Once the association has been formed, the tokens themselves become reinforcing.

Secondary reinforcement is stronger than primary reinforcement because it isn’t tied to biological needs. For instance, if a dog isn’t hungry, it’s unlikely to listen to its trainer’s commands if it’s used to food being a reward. Likewise, if a kid has just had a large piece of cake, he/she isn’t going to practice the musical instrument in exchange for candy. The child may do it in exchange for a star on the chart (secondary reinforcer) that can be exchanged for candy later.

Any organism would do activities that finally help it survive effectively. However, humans look forward to making their lives better apart from survival. Bring complex organisms, both mentally and physically, humans depend mostly on reinforcement that’s in some way connected to their healthy survival.

Even though humans are omnivores, they don’t go hunting in the forest or graze on grasslands. Humans have different methods to acquire food. They work, for which they receive money. Money buys food that satiates hunger, thus helping survival. So, money is the secondary reinforcer.

Here’s another example that can help one understand secondary reinforcers. Humans feel sleepy due to tiredness. Before going to bed, they brush their teeth, wish good night to others at home, say a bedtime prayer, and then go to sleep. The process becomes a ritual and is connected to the behavior of sleeping. So, even if one isn’t tired someday and doesn’t feel sleepy, performing the ritual will involuntarily hint to the body that it’s time to sleep, and the body will prepare itself to sleep. Therefore, in this case, the ritual is a secondary reinforcer.

Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning experiment is a famous example of conditioned or secondary reinforcement. In the experiment, Pavlov rings a bell and immediately gives food to his dog to which it salivates. After repeatedly performing this exercise, the dog learns to connect the bell to food and salivates when it’s rung (even when food isn’t given).