Leaders

Punishment

Erica Taylor

PSY 101

Instructor Meeks

December 09, 2012

Introduction

Punishment is the act of punishing, suffering pain, or loss that serves as retribution, a penalty inflicted on an offender through judgment procedure as well as a severe, rough, or disastrous treatment (Merriam-Webster, 2012). Punishment has been often mistaken with reinforcements. Punishments are either positive or negative. Punishments can be effective in some situations because it is provided for the individual to learn from the problem however there are many people that believe punishment is not effective because of the crimes that people commit and go to prison or jail and get release back into society and commit the same crimes. In addition to this paper, I will be providing information regarding whether or not punishment is an effective way to control or diminish undesirable behavior and describe how punishment corresponds to my own experience as well as suggest alternatives to punishment for diminishing undesirable behavior.

Punishment

Punishment is use for individuals for problems or issues that happen after a negative behavior act. Punishments are often given for reinforcement in hopes the individual learns from the mistake that was made. According to Bandura (1997), “we learn many things through conditioning and it is clear that we highly responsive to reinforcement and perhaps to punishments as well. However, punishment can be mistaken with negative reinforcements because, “negative reinforcement increases the probability of a response; the intended effect of punishment is precisely the opposite”. The different types of reinforcements have cause people to get confused with punishment. Extrinsic reinforcement, intrinsic reinforcement, primary reinforcers, secondary reinforcers, positive reinforcers, and negative reinforcers are the different types of reinforcements that are often confused with punishment, in which there are two types of punishment which are...