What is punishment in Psychology and how is it used?
Punishment is one of the central concepts for behavioral psychology . It is a behavior modification technique whose purpose is to reduce or extinguish the repetition of a behavior.
It is, likewise, a concept that has been constantly taken up and even criticized by some disciplines outside of psychology, as well as by subdisciplines within it; especially by pedagogy, educational psychology, clinical psychology and also organizational psychology, among others.
In colloquial language, the term "punishment" has also been extended and loaded with different meanings, which frequently they use it as a synonym of emotional or physical damage .
This is why talking about "punishment" can have some variations depending on who uses the concept, and can also lead to different confusions. In this article we will see specifically what punishment is in the behavioral tradition psychology (especially in operant conditioning), and how it is used.
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What is punishment? Its use in operant conditioning
The concept of punishment applied in psychology emerges from the current of operant conditioning . The latter was systematized by the North American psychologist Frederic Skinner, who returned to the more classical theories of conditioning developed by John Watson and Ivan Pavlov; and later worked by another American psychologist: Edward Thorndike.
Classical conditioning refers to how we learn a behavior by presenting a stimulus. In very broad strokes, classical conditioning tells us that before the presentation of a stimulus, a response (an action or a behavior) appears.
Operative conditioning, for its part, proposes that a certain consequence follows a response to that response. And the latter, the consequence, is the element that defines if the behavior repeats or decreases .
Thus, operant conditioning analyzes how and what are the consequences that can produce or eliminate certain behavior or action . For this it has been necessary to use different concepts that have significantly impacted both theories and behavior modification interventions. Among these concepts are the "consequence" and the "punishment", we will see developed below.
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The consequence and punishment according to behavioral psychology
In summary terms, the consequence is the effect of the behavior. In other words, it is what occurs after a certain action occurs. The consequence can have two possible outcomes: either it can cause that action to repeat itself, or it can cause the action to decrease.
The first case is a "positive consequence", since it reinforces the behavior and favors its reiteration . In the second case, we speak of a "negative consequence", because its main effect is the suppression of behavior. We see then that, in spite of frequently using concepts such as "positive" or "negative", in the context of operant conditioning it is not about terms that indicate morality, that is, they should not be understood as "good" or "bad", but in terms of its effects and according to the way in which a stimulus is presented.
So, the consequence can both strengthen a behavior and suppress it . And the latter depends on how it is applied and what its purpose is. We can then distinguish two types of consequence:
1. Positive consequence (the reinforcer)
Operant conditioning tells us that to strengthen a behavior, it is necessary to present or withdraw a stimulus . The objective of both presenting and withdrawing it is always to reinforce behavior. The latter can occur through two different actions and elements:
1.1. Positive reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is what happens through the presentation of a pleasant stimulus. For example, when a person is given an incentive (material or immaterial) that he likes, after having had the expected behavior. A classic can be to give a candy to a small child when he has done something that we want to repeat. In the more traditional context of animal experimentation An example of positive reinforcement is when a rat is given a ball of food after pressing a lever.
1.2. Negative reinforcer
Negative reinforcement it consists of removing an unpleasant stimulus . For example, remove something the person does not like: if a child dislikes doing homework, a negative reinforcement is to reduce the number of the latter after he has had a desired behavior (since this will cause the behavior to be repeat).
Another example is when inside a car the alarms that indicate that we do not have a seat belt begin to sound. These alarms are only removed once we have placed the belt. That is, their withdrawal reinforces our behavior.
2. Negative consequence (punishment)
On the other hand, the negative consequence, also called "punishment", has the objective of suppressing a behavior. As in the previous cases it is necessary to present or withdraw a stimulus; only in this case, the purpose is always to extinguish, or at least diminish, the appearance of a behavior . The above follows a learning mechanism more complex than that of the positive consequence, and can occur in two possible ways:
2.1. Positive punishment
In this case there is a stimulus that provokes disgust or rejection, so that the person or the organism associates a behavior with that unpleasant sensation and then avoids its repetition. For example, electrical experiments have been used in animal experiments when they perform unwanted behaviors . An example among people, may be punishments based on unpleasant words or physical approaches.
Frequently, punishments extinguish or diminish conduct only temporarily. In addition, they can reinforce the negative emotional association with the behavior or with the conditioned stimulus, which is the situation (it can be the simple presence of a person) that warns about the aversive stimulus that is approaching.
2.2. Negative punishment
The negative punishment it consists in withdrawing it from a pleasant stimulus . For example, when a person is removed something that he likes. A typical case could be to take a child out of a toy that he likes after he has had a behavior that we do not want him to repeat.
According to how much coherence and relationship exists between unwanted behavior and stimulus, such behavior can be extinguished in the short or long term; and may or may not be generalized to other contexts or people.
In other words, it can happen that the child only suppresses the behavior when faced with a specific person (the one who always takes the toy away), but does not suppress it before other people or in other circumstances. In this case it is important that there is a logical and immediate relationship between the negative consequence and the behavior we wish to extinguish. Finally, even if a behavior manages to become extinct, this does not necessarily imply that it has been replaced by reference models that result in an alternative and more desirable learning.
