I have a (hopefully) simple question for you psychology majors. What is the difference in positive and negative punishment?
I understand positive vs. negative reinforcement, and I understand that punishment (in general) involves the presentation of an aversive stimulus that weakens response, but have any of you ever heard of punishment being broken down into positive and negative?
Thanks in advance for your help.
In the psychology courses I took, I never heard the phrase “poisitve punishment” or “negative punishment.”
There’s positive reinforcement (give your kid a treat when he does something good), there’s negative reinforcement (take away your kid’s TV privileges if he doesn something bad), and there’s punishment (spank him if he does something bad)… but none of the elementary psychology books I had to read broke punishment into “positive” or “negative.”
Psychology Instructor checking in. Simply put Thurgood - Negative punnishment is when an emitted behavior is followed by the removal of some desired stimulus.
Positive Punnishment is when the emitted behavior is followed by an unpleasant stimulus.
They’re both kinds of negative reinforcement. Positive punishment is an introduction of an aversive stimulus…kid does something wrong, you spank him. Negative punishment is the removal of an additive stimulus…kid does something wrong, you take away the TV.
FWIW, when I took Psych 101 back in the dark ages, the terms used were positive/negative reinforcement [to reinforce desired behaviors] and positive/negative suppression [to, obviously, squash undesirable behaviours].
Positive reinforcement:
You make an A on the test, I give you a cookie.
Child throws temper tantrum, so mom gets off the phone with whoever she is talking to and pays attention to child. Child has been thus “rewarded” for temper tantrum.
Negative reinforcement:
If everyone shows up for class every day, the teacher won’t give us pop quizzes.
Child throws temper tantrum, mother ignores child till child quits pitching a fit.
Positive reinforcement doesn’t necessarily reinforce “good” behaviors and negative reinforcement isn’t always a bad thing either.
So that the terms get kept straight:
The “___ punishment” terms have to do with decreasing the likelihood of an unwanted behavior.
Positive Punishment
To decrease the likelihood of an undesirable behavior, an aversive stimulus is given in response to the undesirable behavior.
Example: If you don’t study, you’ll flunk your exam.
[sub]Undesirable behavior: Not studying
Aversive stimulus: flunking[/sub]
Negative Punishment
To decrease the likelihood of an undesirable behavior, an appetitive stimulus is removed in response to the undesirable behavior.
Example: If you don’t study, you won’t get an A in the class.
[sub]Undesirable behavior: Not studying
Appetitive stimulus: Getting an A in the class[/sub]
By contrast, the “___ reinforcement” terms are about increasing the likelihood of desired behavoir.
Positive Reinforcement
To increase the likelihood of a desirable behavior, an appetitive stimulus is given in response to the desirable behavior.
Example: If you study, you’ll impress the cute girl.
[sub]Desirable behavior: Studying
Appetitive stimulus: Impressing the cute girl[/sub]
Negative Reinforcement
To increase the likelihood of a desirable behavior, an aversive stimulus is not given in response to the desirable behavior.
Example: If you study, you won’t have to take out the stinky garbage.
[sub]Desirable behavior: Studying
Aversive stimulus: Taking out the stinky garbage[/sub]
Hope that helps.
I think what leads to confusion is the common use of the word “negative” to mean “bad” or “undesirable”. In technical use, “negative” generally means “taken away instead of added”, or “something isn’t there that might have been there”. Back in EMT class, one of my fellow students had the hardest time understanding that a negative result to a Babinski test was a good thing. When I hear people say “negative reinforcement”, they universally mean something entirely different from the meaning I learned in Psych 101. In psychology, “negative reinforcement” does NOT mean “punishment”; it means, as AudreyK has explained, the removal of an unpleasant stimulus as a way to encourage the behavior in question.
Thanks for your help, everyone. I aced that section of my exam.
I also totally nailed the one about houseboats.
Houseboats and punishment? What class is this?
Never mind. I don’t think I wanna know.