Negative and Positive Reinforcement and Punishment

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Positive and Negative Reinforcement and Punishment Jacqueline Taylor Introduction to Psychology Amber Messner Ivy Tech Community College February 16, 2012 Positive Reinforcement A positive reinforce is a result that increases the frequency of a behavior. What is reinforcing is defined by what comes about to the frequency of the behavior. It has nothing to do with whether the organism finds the reinforcer 'pleasant' or not (Reinforcement, 2012). When deciding whether or not something is a reinforcer or not, the basic criteria is whether there is a behavior that is increasing or being maintained in the frequency of its occurrence. Positive reinforcement is when you use praise or a reward to increase a good response (Psychology 101, 2011). Back when I had a dog I taught him a trick…I would ask him who my buddy is and he would put his paw on his nose…when I would ask who his buddy was he would lick my face. To show that he was right I would praise him and pet him a lot. He finally got to the point I didn’t have to reward him. Although I have probably been raised with more of a negative reinforcement, I tend to use positive reinforcement. Another example is, my sister doesn’t like to go to school so she skips a lot…well to get her to go and get excited about it, whenever she does go I fist pump her. She smiles really big and says thanks. This week she has not missed one day. I think the best example of positive reinforcement that I have used was when I was trying to get my little cousin to grow up and stop acting like a baby. I told her she needed to grow up… so every time she would do something grown up I would tell her how proud of her I was. Now I was looking for grown up things, until she noticed I was watching everything she did…so she would purposely start acting grown up. So I would hug her and kiss her and tell her

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