Positive And Negative Reinforcement

Reinforcement and punishment shape the way we perceive the world around us and are huge components to how we learn. Therefore, it is vital to understand the difference and how they apply to different situations. Before comparing the two categories, we must grasp a better understanding of each of them separately. Reinforcement can be defined as anything that increases the possibility that a response will occur. It will always either strengthen or increase a behavior. Reinforcement can further be broken down into two categories of positive and negative. In this context, it is important to indicate that positive and negative refer to addition and subtraction rather than good and bad, which many people mistake it for. In positive reinforcement,

Therefore, I would most likely try to increase my sales so that I could receive free product. The positive reinforcer in this context is free product given. The behavior that would be increasing is my amount of sales.

Negative reinforcement can be reviewed the same way. Although both lead to strengthening a behavior, negative reinforcement does so by removing a negative stimuli, which could be anything that is unwanted. For example, my manager will cover all of the cleaning tasks if we sold at least one two hundred dollars of merchandise every day of the week. Therefore, all the workers would strive to sell at least two hundred dollars a day so that we would not have to care of any custodial tasks. In this example, the negative stimuli would be taking away the unwanted chores while the behavior would again be increasing sales. When discussing negative reinforcement it is important not to associate it with punishment, which is another form of

This is a type of learning that was studied and originated by B.F Skinner. He realized that individuals associate their own actions with consequences. Therefore through our own actions and observance of consequences we learn what behaviors are acceptable and which are not. This type of learning was actually built off the theories of Ivan Pavlov’s classical conditioning. Unlike operant conditioning, this type of learning does not involve behavior. Instead, an organism learns by associating a unconditioned stimulus with a neutral stimulus. An unconditioned stimulus is something that naturally triggers a response. For example making sales at work. The stimuli would be making sales and in return the response would be happiness. The unconditioned stimulus is then paired with a neutral stimulus which is not associated with a response before conditioning. For this example, we can use a rainy day. Therefore, the unconditioned stimulus of making sales is then paired with the neutral stimulus of a rainy day. Now every time it rains you expect to make a lot of sales since a rainy day is now associated with making sales. Making sales becomes a conditioned response when it is