In operant conditioning, punishment
In operant conditioning, punishment is a term used to refer to any change that happens after a behavior and aims at reducing the likelihood of that behavior reoccurring again in future. The primary focus of administering punishment is to reduce or eliminate undesired behavior. According to B. F. Skinner, punishment can be grouped as either positive punishment or negative punishment. Positive punishment, also known as punishment by application, refer to any kind of aversive stimuli presented after the occurrence of a behavior. On the other hand, negative punishment, also known as punishment by removal, happen when there is the removal of a certain favorite or desired item from the life of an individual. Besides changing behavior, negative punishment also assists in decreasing the rate at which an individual practice an undesirable behavior.
My Personal Experience with Punishment
There is a time during my years in high school I had started to develop laziness. I remember in one instance whereby our mathematics teacher had given us homework to solve over the weekend. We were given ten questions and the teacher required every student to work individually and present the solved questions on Monday of the following week. However, I had not solved the questions by the deadline our teacher had provided. After the lesson, she instructed me to follow her to the office and enquired why I had not done the work. I tried to justify myself but all the reasons I provided were unsatisfactory. As a punishment, she required me to be solving five questions every day and to be presenting the work every morning in her office. I was required to practice this for a period of three weeks.
In another case, I was much addicted to video gaming and would spend much of my time during weekends playing games on my Xbox. One weekend, my mother assigned me some household duties before she went out shopping. Immediately she left the house, I stopped working and resumed video gaming. When she came back, she found me playing but I had not completed the work she had assigned. She grew angry and took away the Xbox. I was given a condition that the Xbox would only be given back when I changed my behavior.
The strategy used by our mathematics teacher worked very well. The first four days were a challenge but as time progressed, I was able to cope and worked as required by our teacher. By the end of the two weeks, I had changed my attitude towards assignments. Also, the strategy enabled me to reduce laziness. As a high school student, I felt it inappropriate to be doing assignments through close supervision of the teacher. Also, I did not want the situation to escalate and my parents to know about my laziness in school. In the second scenario, my mother took away my Xbox did not make me change my behavior. The action affected me a lot psychologically and had to find an alternative. In fact, the situation worsened and I would sneak away from home on weekends to go and video game with my friends.
Consistency is Key
While punishment can be effective in reducing unwanted behavior, in some scenarios, they make an individual’s behavior to deteriorate. Punishment is able to achieve desired results when applied consistently. My mother was not consistent in punishing me due to my behavior on weekends, and this was the reason why her strategy was ineffective. It is necessary to ensure that punishment administered is consistent in order to overcome any arising drawbacks.
