Reinforcement and Punishment-The better one:
Reinforcement and Punishment are both part and parcel of everybody’s life. What is more important is that when to use Reinforcement and Punishment really matters. Before getting into the subject on when to use the above, it is important to understand the meaning and consequences of the above.
Reinforcement stimulates certain behaviour and enables the favourable or unfavourable events to recur. Here, favourable or unfavourable events makes the difference on what type of reinforcement that one should use whether positive or negative reinforcement.
For example, if you reward a student with the medal or appreciation for achieving top marks or first place in a sport, then this is a positive reinforcement which refers to add something to encourage the behaviour or characteristics. Whereas in an event, if a father takes away his child’s video game gadget if he or she fails to pass the subjects in an exam.
In the above case, negative reinforcement is not exactly punishment. There is a subtle difference between negative reinforcement and punishment. The former involves strengthening response after removal of unfavourable events while latter entails the imposition of unfavorable event that causes decrease in behaviour.
While positive reinforcement is always a welcome action for rewarding and constructive experience, the choice of negative reinforcement and punishment is a tricky affair as it has subtle difference and outcomes. Recently, one of my friend who is a animal lover used punishment uniquely while dealing with his pet dog.
Pet dog in order to create an attention jumped on to guests whenever they visited, it created bit of awkwardness to guests. My friend instead of punishing the dog by unfavourable beating action, he started to avoid by turning other side or by ignoring and doing other serious work. Instead, he rewarded the dog by giving its attention when it dog is quietly laying down or during polite sit down posture.
This type of reward was successful after he initially started ignoring whenever it jumped upon people. So, negative reinforcement is another type of favourable punishment.