Operant Conditioning

In life, you may find yourself stumbling across the question “Why do I behave the way I do?” You may also wonder how much your environment shapes to your behavior in the first place. Do we as humans behave a certain way because of the way we were raised or even simply where we were raised? Is it possible to shape an entire community to a different conformity than they’re used to? There are a few professionals that have worked to discover the answers to these questions, but there is one in particular that has been the most successful.

B.F. Skinner was an American Psychologist and Behaviorist known majorly for his observations on the operant conditioning theory. Within this theory, he discovered that there are four possible outcomes a person can receive due to a given behavior. A positive reinforcement is an outcome that presents a positive stimulus after a response to strengthen the said response. When I was younger, my mother would demonstrate positive reinforcement using an allowance as a reward when I behaved and did as I was instructed throughout our day-by-day routines during the week. By doing this, I always expected a reward at the end of each week which subconsciously made we want to give good behavior as often as possible. The second outcome a person can expect to receive is positive punishment. This type of punishment occurs, for instance, when a child is scolded for doing wrong after they’ve broken the rule. This would happen when I was a child if I were to sneak snacks after the sun went down. Negative reinforcement is a reinforcement that removes an aversive stimulus after a response to achieve strength within the reinforcement. As kids, my siblings and I learned that if we did our chores as we were told, there wouldn’t be a punishment following. If we didn’t oblige to what we were asked, we were scolded. A negative punishment removes the positive stimulus after the response. An example of this would be parents grounding their children after returning home from sneaking out to a party.

Along with the advantages of punishment, you can also expect there can be some drawbacks. Some people say that punishment isn’t very reinforcing to the punisher because a lot of the time, punishment is displayed with anger. This anger can cause a detachment between the punisher and their subject. It has also been shown that punishment can lead distressed children in to very aggressive states toward the punisher. Physical violence is not uncommon when undergoing punishment. Prison is used in the world to