Motivation vs. Deterrence - Reinforcement and Punishment in Perspective

In short operant conditioning is a method used in psychiatry to enforce people to follow the law either directly or indirectly .

And it has two main subdivisions , either reinforcement or punishment .

As the name suggests , reinforcement is usually something good .

We give the patient or the subject pleasure if he follows our rules , if he would , if he does what we want him to do , and the opposite is punishment .

If he doesn't do what we want him to do , we will give him pain , we will give him something he doesn't like .

Now , both reinforcement and punishment have positive and negative .

So you can say positive punishment or you can say negative punishment and you can say positive reinforcement and negative reinforce .

And here is the simplest way how to remember these things and how to differentiate between them .

Whenever you say positive or whenever you see positive , it means that you're gonna give or add something .

Whenever you see negative , it means that you're gonna take away something .

Let's take a quick example , that helps us to understand this better .

Say , for example , if there's a driver who always respects others who always drive safely , he never breaks the law .

So this is a good subject and we want to reinforce him to continue being good .

So , positive reinforcement , as we said , positive means adding something .

So we're gonna add , we're gonna give him something good , something pleasureful .

So in this case , we're going to give him a free car wash , say now we want to use negative reinforcement .

So basically , we're gonna take away something from him , take away something he doesn't like .

So in this scenario , we're gonna take away his taxes for example .

So he doesn't have to pay tax .

On the other hand , say if there's a bad driver who always yells at other people who never drives safely , he always speeds up .

So , you know , we want to use punishment to enforce him to follow the law .

So basically , what we're going to do is positive punishment .

As we said , positive means we're going to add something .

So we're going to add pain to this subject so he could .

So he would stop doing this .

And in this scenario , pain , for example , is jail or something unpleasant for him .

And negative punishment means we're going to take away something he likes , we're going to take away something from him .

And in this case , negative punishment is , is the equivalent of the police taking away his car , for example .

So that's everything I've got today about reinforcement and punishment .

Basically upward conditioning and hopefully I made these things easier for you and see you guys later .