Professional Sports: Rewarding and Punishing the Same Behavior

Case Incident 2

Professional Sports: Rewarding and Punishing the Same Behavior?

James

2.

This particular case surrounds the issue of steroids in Major League Baseball. Are teams punishing and rewarding players who take steroids? Some of the problems that face the players are that there isn’t enough of a penalty for taking the steroids and they don’t realize the effects of taking it. There needs to be a strong message out there that stears young people away from taking it. Right now, there isn’t enough information out there that can show people why taking it is very hazardous to your health.

3.

There are a couple major problems that should be identified in this case. For one, it all starts with Positive Reinforcement. Skinner emphesized that Positive Reinforcement was superior to Punishment and that it only led to the problem being away for a limited time. If there can be some stimulus that would make baseball players stay away from steroids it would work a lot better than giving them suspensions. However, I can’t see people talking to athletes as if they are children in order to make them do something right. One way to help out would be a drug free campaign endorsing star athletes who live fruitful lives. Whether someone gets scolded or gets caught doing something wrong such as steroids, people tend to put the blame to external factors such as in Arod’s case where he said “I was young, I was stupid, I was neive…” He was experiencing self-serving bias where he was putting the blame on his younger years even though he wasn’t a teenager, he was actually 28 when he allegedly took steroids for the first time. That doesn’t seem to young to me. If he was young and dumb, why didn’t he come out with it since then and tell everyone about his abuse.

The owners of the MLB teams should be stricter on the players in enforcing a stricter penalty. However, when players rise above the norm, ticket sales and profits rise. So why would they try to...