Punishment (psychology)

Last updated
Operant conditioning Extinction
Reinforcement
Increase behavior
Punishment
Decrease behavior
Positive reinforcement
Add appetitive stimulus
following correct behavior
Negative reinforcementPositive punishment
Add noxious stimulus
following behavior
Negative punishment
Remove appetitive stimulus
following behavior
Escape
Remove noxious stimulus
following correct behavior
Active avoidance
Behavior avoids noxious stimulus

In operant conditioning, punishment is any change in a human or animal's surroundings which, occurring after a given behavior or response, reduces the likelihood of that behavior occurring again in the future. As with reinforcement, it is the behavior, not the human/animal, that is punished. Whether a change is or is not punishing is determined by its effect on the rate that the behavior occurs. This is called motivating operations (MO), [1] because they alter the effectiveness of a stimulus. MO can be categorized in abolishing operations, decrease the effectiveness of the stimuli and establishing, increase the effectiveness of the stimuli. For example, a painful stimulus which would act as a punisher for most people may actually reinforce some behaviors of masochistic individuals.

Contents

There are two types of punishment, positive and negative. Positive punishment involves the introduction of a stimulus to decrease behavior while negative punishment involves the removal of a stimulus to decrease behavior. While similar to reinforcement, punishment's goal is to decrease behaviors while reinforcement's goal is to increase behaviors. Different kinds of stimuli exist as well. There are rewarding stimuli which are considered pleasant and aversive stimuli, which are considered unpleasant. There are also two types of punishers. There are primary punishers which directly affect the individual such as pain and are a natural response and then there are secondary punishers which are things that are learned to be negative like a buzzing sound when getting an answer wrong on a game show.

Conflicting findings have been found on the effectiveness of the use of punishment. [2] [3] [4] Some have found that punishment can be a useful tool in suppressing behavior while some have found it to have a weak effect on suppressing behavior. Punishment can also lead to lasting negative unintended side effects as well. [5] Punishment has been found to be effective in countries that are wealthy, high in trust, cooperation, and democracy. [6]

Punishment has been used in a lot of different applications. Punishment has been used in applied behavioral analysis, specifically in situations to try and punish dangerous behaviors like head banging. Punishment has also been used to psychologically manipulate individuals to gain control over victims. It has also been used in scenarios where an abuser may try punishment in order to traumatically bond their victim with them. Stuttering therapy has also seen the use of punishment with effective results. Certain punishment techniques have been effective in children with disabilities, such as autism and intellectual disabilities.

Types

There are two basic types of punishment in operant conditioning:

Punishment is not a mirror effect of reinforcement. In experiments with laboratory animals and studies with children, punishment decreases the likelihood of a previously reinforced response only temporarily, and it can produce other "emotional" behavior (wing-flapping in pigeons, for example) and physiological changes (increased heart rate, for example) that have no clear equivalents in reinforcement.[ citation needed ]

Punishment is considered by some behavioral psychologists to be a "primary process" – a completely independent phenomenon of learning, distinct from reinforcement. Others see it as a category of negative reinforcement, creating a situation in which any punishment-avoiding behavior (even standing still) is reinforced.

Positive

Positive punishment occurs when a response produces a stimulus and that response decreases in probability in the future in similar circumstances.

Negative

Negative punishment occurs when a response produces the removal of a stimulus and that response decreases in probability in the future in similar circumstances.

Versus reinforcement

Simply put, reinforcers serve to increase behaviors whereas punishers serve to decrease behaviors; thus, positive reinforcers are stimuli that the subject will work to attain, and negative reinforcers are stimuli that the subject will work to be rid of or to end. [7] The table below illustrates the adding and subtracting of stimuli (pleasant or aversive) in relation to reinforcement vs. punishment.

Rewarding (pleasant) stimulus Aversive (unpleasant) stimulus
Adding/PresentingPositive ReinforcementPositive Punishment
Removing/Taking AwayNegative PunishmentNegative Reinforcement

Types of stimuli and punishers

Rewarding stimuli (pleasant)

A rewarding stimuli is a stimulus that is considered pleasant. For example, a child may be allowed TV time everyday. Punishment often involves the removal of a rewarding stimuli if an undesired action is done. If the child were to misbehave, this rewarding stimulus of TV time would be removed which would result in negative punishment.

Aversive stimuli (unpleasant)

Aversive Stimuli , punisher, and punishing stimulus are somewhat synonymous. Punishment may be used to mean

  1. An aversive stimulus
  2. The occurrence of any punishing change
  3. The part of an experiment in which a particular response is punished.

Some things considered aversive can become reinforcing. In addition, some things that are aversive may not be punishing if accompanying changes are reinforcing. A classic example would be mis-behavior that is 'punished' by a teacher but actually increases over time due to the reinforcing effects of attention on the student.

Primary punishers

Pain, loud noises, foul tastes, bright lights, and exclusion are all things that would pass the "caveman test" as an aversive stimulus, and are therefore primary punishers. Primary punishers can also be loss of money and receiving negative feedback from people. [8]

Secondary punishers

The sound of someone booing, the wrong-answer buzzer on a game show, and a ticket on your car windshield are all things society has learned to think about as negative, and are considered secondary punishers.

Effectiveness

Contrary to suggestions by Skinner and others that punishment typically has weak or impermanent effects, [2] a large body of research has shown that it can have a powerful and lasting effect in suppressing the punished behavior. [3] [4] Furthermore, more severe punishments are more effective, and very severe ones may even produce complete suppression. [9] However, it may also have powerful and lasting side effects. For example, an aversive stimulus used to punish a particular behavior may also elicit a strong emotional response that may suppress unpunished behavior and become associated with situational stimuli through classical conditioning. [5] Such side effects suggest caution and restraint in the use of punishment to modify behavior. Spanking in particular has been found to have lasting side effects. Parents often use spanking to try make their child act better but there is minimal evidence suggesting that spanking is effective in doing so. Some lasting side effects of spanking include lower cognitive ability, lower self-esteem, and more mental health problems for the child. Some side effects can reach into adulthood as well such as antisocial behavior and support for punishment that involves physical force such as spanking. [10] Punishment is more effective in increasing cooperation in high-trust societies than low-trust societies. [6] Punishment was also more effective in countries that have stronger norms for cooperation, high in wealth, and countries that are high-democratic rather than low-democratic. [6]

Importance of contingency and contiguity

One variable affecting punishment is contingency, which is defined as the dependency of events. A behavior may be dependent on a stimulus or dependent on a response. The purpose of punishment is to reduce a behavior, and the degree to which punishment is effective in reducing a targeted behavior is dependent on the relationship between the behavior and a punishment. For example, if a rat receives an aversive stimulus, such as a shock each time it presses a lever, then it is clear that contingency occurs between lever pressing and shock. In this case, the punisher (shock) is contingent upon the appearance of the behavior (lever pressing). Punishment is most effective when contingency is present between a behavior and a punisher. A second variable affecting punishment is contiguity, which is the closeness of events in time and/or space. Contiguity is important to reducing behavior because the longer the time interval between an unwanted behavior and a punishing effect, the less effective the punishment will be. One major problem with a time delay between a behavior and a punishment is that other behaviors may present during that time delay. The subject may then associate the punishment given with the unintended behaviors, and thus suppressing those behaviors instead of the targeted behavior. Therefore, immediate punishment is more effective in reducing a targeted behavior than a delayed punishment would be. However, there may ways to improve the effectiveness of delayed punishment, such as providing verbal explanation, reenacting the behavior, increasing punishment intensity, or other methods. [11]

Applications

Applied behavior analysis

Punishment is sometimes used for in applied behavior analysis under the most extreme cases, to reduce dangerous behaviors such as head banging or biting exhibited most commonly by children or people with special needs. Punishment is considered one of the ethical challenges to autism treatment, has led to significant controversy, and is one of the major points for professionalizing behavior analysis. Professionalizing behavior analysis through licensure would create a board to ensure that consumers or families had a place to air disputes, and would ensure training in how to use such tactics properly. (see Professional practice of behavior analysis)

Controversy regarding ABA persists in the autism community. A 2017 study found that 46% of people with autism spectrum undergoing ABA appeared to meet the criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a rate 86% higher than the rate of those who had not undergone ABA (28%). According to the researcher, the rate of apparent PTSD increased after exposure to ABA regardless of the age of the patient. [12] However, the quality of this study has been disputed by other researchers. [13]

Psychological manipulation

Braiker identified the following ways that manipulators control their victims: [14]

Traumatic bonding

Traumatic bonding occurs as the result of ongoing cycles of abuse in which the intermittent reinforcement of reward and punishment creates powerful emotional bonds that are resistant to change. [15] [16]

Punishment used in stuttering therapy

Early studies in the late 60's to early 70's have shown that punishment via time-out (a form of negative punishment) can reduce the severity of stuttering in patients. Since the punishment in these studies was time-out which resulted in the removal of the permission to speak, speaking itself was seen as reinforcing which thus made the time-out an effective form of punishment. [17] [18] [19] Some research has also shown that it is not the time-out that is considered punishing but rather the fact that the removal of the permission to speak was seen as punishing because it interrupted the individual's speech. [19] [20]

Punishment in children with disabilities

Some studies have found effective punishment techniques concerning children with disabilities, such as autism and intellectual disabilities. [21] The targeted behaviors were self-injurious behaviors such as head banging, motor, stereotypy, aggression, emesis, or breaking the rules. [22] Some techniques that were used are timeout, overcorrection, contingent aversive, response blocking, and response interruption and redirection (RIRD). [21] [22] Most punishment techniques were used alone or combined with other punishment techniques; however, the use of punishment techniques alone was less effective in reducing targeted behaviors. [21] Timeout was used the most even though it was less effective in reducing targeted behaviors; however, contingent aversive was used the least even though it was more effective in reducing targeted behaviors. [21] Using punishment techniques in combination with reinforcement-based interventions was more effective than a punishment technique alone or using multiple punishment techniques. [21]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">B. F. Skinner</span> American psychologist and social philosopher (1904–1990)

Burrhus Frederic Skinner was an American psychologist, behaviorist, inventor, and social philosopher. Considered the father of Behaviorism, he was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University from 1958 until his retirement in 1974.

Operant conditioning, also called instrumental conditioning, is a learning process where voluntary behaviors are modified by association with the addition of reward or aversive stimuli. The frequency or duration of the behavior may increase through reinforcement or decrease through punishment or extinction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reinforcement</span> Consequence affecting an organisms future behavior

In behavioral psychology, reinforcement is any consequence that increases the likelihood of an organism's future behavior whenever that behavior is preceded by a particular antecedent stimulus. For example, a rat can be trained to push a lever to receive food whenever a light is turned on. In this example, the light is the antecedent stimulus, the lever pushing is the behavior, and the food is the reinforcement. Likewise, a student that receives attention and praise when answering a teacher's question will be more likely to answer future questions in class. The teacher's question is the antecedent, the student's response is the behavior, and the praise and attention are the reinforcements.

The experimental analysis of behavior is a science that studies the behavior of individuals across a variety of species. A key early scientist was B. F. Skinner who discovered operant behavior, reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, contingencies of reinforcement, stimulus control, shaping, intermittent schedules, discrimination, and generalization. A central method was the examination of functional relations between environment and behavior, as opposed to hypothetico-deductive learning theory that had grown up in the comparative psychology of the 1920–1950 period. Skinner's approach was characterized by observation of measurable behavior which could be predicted and controlled. It owed its early success to the effectiveness of Skinner's procedures of operant conditioning, both in the laboratory and in behavior therapy.

Behaviorism is a systematic approach to understand the behavior of humans and other animals. It assumes that behavior is either a reflex evoked by the pairing of certain antecedent stimuli in the environment, or a consequence of that individual's history, including especially reinforcement and punishment contingencies, together with the individual's current motivational state and controlling stimuli. Although behaviorists generally accept the important role of heredity in determining behavior, they focus primarily on environmental events. The cognitive revolution of the late 20th century largely replaced behaviorism as an explanatory theory with cognitive psychology, which unlike behaviorism examines internal mental states.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clicker training</span> Animal training method

Clicker training is a positive reinforcement animal training method based on a bridging stimulus in operant conditioning. The system uses conditioned reinforcers, which a trainer can deliver more quickly and more precisely than primary reinforcers such as food. The term "clicker" comes from a small metal cricket noisemaker adapted from a child's toy that the trainer uses to precisely mark the desired behavior. When training a new behavior, the clicker helps the animal to quickly identify the precise behavior that results in the treat. The technique is popular with dog trainers, but can be used for all kinds of domestic and wild animals.

In psychology, aversives are unpleasant stimuli that induce changes in behavior via negative reinforcement or positive punishment. By applying an aversive immediately before or after a behavior the likelihood of the target behavior occurring in the future is reduced. Aversives can vary from being slightly unpleasant or irritating to physically, psychologically and/or emotionally damaging. It is not the level of unpleasantness or intention that defines something as an aversive, but rather the level of effectiveness the unpleasant event has on changing (decreasing) behavior.

Motivational salience is a cognitive process and a form of attention that motivates or propels an individual's behavior towards or away from a particular object, perceived event or outcome. Motivational salience regulates the intensity of behaviors that facilitate the attainment of a particular goal, the amount of time and energy that an individual is willing to expend to attain a particular goal, and the amount of risk that an individual is willing to accept while working to attain a particular goal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dog training</span> Practice of teaching behaviors to dogs

Dog training is a kind of animal training, the application of behavior analysis which uses the environmental events of antecedents and consequences to modify the dog behavior, either for it to assist in specific activities or undertake particular tasks, or for it to participate effectively in contemporary domestic life. While training dogs for specific roles dates back to Roman times at least, the training of dogs to be compatible household pets developed with suburbanization in the 1950s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Animal training</span> Teaching animals specific responses to specific conditions or stimuli

Animal training is the act of teaching animals specific responses to specific conditions or stimuli. Training may be for purposes such as companionship, detection, protection, and entertainment. The type of training an animal receives will vary depending on the training method used, and the purpose for training the animal. For example, a seeing eye dog will be trained to achieve a different goal than a wild animal in a circus.

Applied behavior analysis (ABA), also called behavioral engineering, is a psychological intervention that applies approaches based upon the principles of respondent and operant conditioning to change behavior of social significance. It is the applied form of behavior analysis; the other two forms are radical behaviorism and the experimental analysis of behavior.

Behavior modification is a treatment approach that uses respondent and operant conditioning to change behavior. Based on methodological behaviorism, overt behavior is modified with (antecedent) stimulus control and consequences, including positive and negative reinforcement contingencies to increase desirable behavior, or administering positive and negative punishment and/or extinction to reduce problematic behavior. It also uses systematic desensitization and flooding to combat phobias.

In classical conditioning, the delay reduction hypothesis states that certain discriminative stimuli (DS) are more effective signals for conditioned reinforcers (CR) if they signal a decrease in time to a positive reinforcer or an increase in time to an aversive stimulus or punishment. This is often applied in chain link schedules, with the final link being the aversive stimulus or positive (unconditioned) reinforcer.

Behavior management, similar to behavior modification, is a less-intensive form of behavior therapy. Unlike behavior modification, which focuses on changing behavior, behavior management focuses on maintaining positive habits and behaviors and reducing negative ones. Behavior management skills are especially useful for teachers and educators, healthcare workers, and those working in supported living communities. This form of management aims to help professionals oversee and guide behavior management in individuals and groups toward fulfilling, productive, and socially acceptable behaviors. Behavior management can be accomplished through modeling, rewards, or punishment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parrot training</span>

Parrot training, also called parrot teaching, is the application of training techniques to modify the behavior of household companion parrots. Training is used to deal with behavior problems such as biting and screaming, to train husbandry behaviors such as allowing claw trimming without restraint or accepting a parrot harness, and to teach various tricks.

Emotional responsivity is the ability to acknowledge an affective stimuli by exhibiting emotion. It is a sharp change of emotion according to a person's emotional state. Increased emotional responsivity refers to demonstrating more response to a stimulus. Reduced emotional responsivity refers to demonstrating less response to a stimulus. Any response exhibited after exposure to the stimulus, whether it is appropriate or not, would be considered as an emotional response. Although emotional responsivity applies to nonclinical populations, it is more typically associated with individuals with schizophrenia and autism.

Motivating operation (MO) is a behavioristic concept introduced by Jack Michael in 1982. It is used to explain variations in the effects in the consequences of behavior. Most importantly, an MO affects how strongly the individual is reinforced or punished by the consequences of their behavior. For example, food deprivation is a motivating operation; if a idividual is hungry, food is strongly reinforcing, but if they are satiated, food is less reinforcing. In 2003 Laraway suggested subdividing MOs into those that increase the reinforcing or punishing effects of a stimulus, which are termed establishing operations, and MOs that decrease the reinforcing or punishing effects of a stimulus, which are termed abolishing operations.

Functional behavior assessment (FBA) is an ongoing process of collecting information with a goal of identifying the environmental variables that control a problem or target behavior. The purpose of the assessment is to prove and aid the effectiveness of the interventions or treatments used to help eliminate the problem behavior. Through functional behavior assessments, we have learned that there are complex patterns to people's seemingly unproductive behaviors. It is important to not only pay attention to consequences that follow the behavior but also the antecedent that evokes the behavior. More work needs to be done in the future with functional assessment including balancing precision and efficiency, being more specific with variables involved and a more smooth transition from assessment to intervention.

An antecedent is a stimulus that cues an organism to perform a learned behavior. When an organism perceives an antecedent stimulus, it behaves in a way that maximizes reinforcing consequences and minimizes punishing consequences. This might be part of complex, interpersonal communication.

The three-term contingency in operant conditioning—or contingency management—describes the relationship between a behavior, its consequence, and the environmental context. The three-term contingency was first defined by B. F. Skinner in the early 1950s. It is often used within ABA to alter the frequency of socially significant human behavior.

References

  1. "Motivating Operations". ABA: Applied Behavior Analysis. Retrieved 2022-07-21.
  2. 1 2 Skinner BF (1953). Science and Human Behavior. New York: McMIllan.
  3. 1 2 Solomon RL (1964). "Punishment". American Psychologist. 19 (4): 239–253. doi:10.1037/h0042493.
  4. 1 2 Lerman DC, Vorndran CM (2002). "On the status of knowledge for using punishment implications for treating behavior disorders". Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis. 35 (4): 431–64. doi:10.1901/jaba.2002.35-431. PMC   1284409 . PMID   12555918.
  5. 1 2 Schwartz B, Wasserman EA, Robbins SJ (2002). Psychology of Learning and Behavior (5th ed.). New York: Norton.
  6. 1 2 3 Balliet, Daniel; Van Lange, Paul A. M. (2013). "Trust, Punishment, and Cooperation Across 18 Societies: A Meta-Analysis". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 8 (4): 363–379. doi:10.1177/1745691613488533. ISSN   1745-6916. PMID   26173117. S2CID   39357485.
  7. D'Amato MR (1969). Melvin H. Marx (ed.). Learning Processes: Instrumental Conditioning. Toronto: The Macmillan Company.
  8. Jean-Richard-Dit-Bressel, Philip; Killcross, Simon; McNally, Gavan P. (2018). "Behavioral and neurobiological mechanisms of punishment: implications for psychiatric disorders". Neuropsychopharmacology. 43 (8): 1639–1650. doi:10.1038/s41386-018-0047-3. ISSN   0893-133X. PMC   6006171 . PMID   29703994.
  9. Azrin NH (April 1960). "Effects of punishment intensity during variable-interval reinforcement". Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior. 3 (2): 123–142. doi:10.1901/jeab.1960.3-123. PMC   1403961 . PMID   13795412.
  10. Gershoff ET, Grogan-Kaylor A (June 2016). "Spanking and child outcomes: Old controversies and new meta-analyses". Journal of Family Psychology. 30 (4): 453–469. doi:10.1037/fam0000191. PMC   7992110 . PMID   27055181.
  11. Meindl JN, Casey LB (July 2012). "Increasing the suppressive effect of delayed punishers: a review of basic and applied literature". Behavioral Interventions. 27 (3): 129–150. doi:10.1002/bin.1341.
  12. Kupferstein H (2018). "Evidence of increased PTSD symptoms in autism exposed to applied behavior analysis". Advances in Autism. 4 (1): 19–29. doi:10.1108/AIA-08-2017-0016. S2CID   4638346.
  13. Leaf JB, Ross RK, Cihon JH, Weiss MJ (October 2018). "Evaluating Kupferstein's claims of the relationship of behavioral intervention to PTSS for individuals with autism". Advances in Autism. 4 (3): 122–129. doi: 10.1108/AIA-02-2018-0007 . S2CID   150000349.
  14. Braiker HB (2004). Who's Pulling Your Strings ? How to Break The Cycle of Manipulation. McGraw Hill Professional. ISBN   0-07-144672-9.
  15. Dutton DG, Painter SL (1981). "Traumatic Bonding: The development of emotional attachments in battered women and other relationships of intermittent abus". Victimology. 6 (1–4): 139–155.
  16. Sanderson C (2008). "Understanding survivors of domestic abuse". Counselling survivors of domestic abuse. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers. p. 84. ISBN   978-1-84642-811-1.
  17. Haroldson SK, Martin RR, Starr CD (September 1968). "Time-out as a punishment for stuttering". Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. 11 (3): 560–566. doi:10.1044/jshr.1103.560. PMID   5722480.
  18. Martin R, Berndt LA (December 1970). "The effects of time-out on stuttering in a 12 year old boy". Exceptional Children. 37 (4): 303–304. doi: 10.1177/001440297003700410 . PMID   5479096. S2CID   43378134.
  19. 1 2 Nittrouer S, Cheney C (September 1984). "Operant techniques used in stuttering therapy: A review". Journal of Fluency Disorders. 9 (3): 169–190. doi:10.1016/0094-730X(84)90011-1. ISSN   0094-730X.
  20. James JE, Ingham RJ (March 1974). "The influence of stutterer's expectancies of improvement upon response to time-out". Journal of Speech and Hearing Research. 17 (1): 86–93. doi:10.1044/jshr.1701.86. PMID   4828366.
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 Lydon, Sinéad; Healy, Olive; Moran, Laura; Foody, Ciara (2015). "A quantitative examination of punishment research". Research in Developmental Disabilities. 36: 470–484. doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2014.10.036. PMID   25462507.
  22. 1 2 Pokorski, Elizabeth A.; Barton, Erin E. (2021). "A Systematic Review of the Ethics of Punishment-Based Procedures for Young Children With Disabilities". Remedial and Special Education. 42 (4): 262–275. doi:10.1177/0741932520918859. ISSN   0741-9325. S2CID   219750966.

Further reading