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), 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.
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. 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. Punishment has been found to be effective in countries that are wealthy, high in trust, cooperation, and democracy.
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:
positive punishment, punishment by application, or type I punishment, an experimenter punishes a response by presenting an aversive stimulus into the animal's surroundings (a brief electric shock, for example). negative punishment, punishment by removal, or type II punishment, a valued, appetitive stimulus is removed (as in the removal of a feeding dish). As with reinforcement, it is not usually necessary to speak of positive and negative in regard to punishment.
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.
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. Example: A mother yells at a child when he or she runs into the street. If the child stops running into the street, the yelling ceases. The yelling acts as positive punishment because the mother presents (adds) an unpleasant stimulus in the form of yelling. Example: A barefoot person walks onto a hot asphalt surface, creating pain, a positive punishment. When the person leaves the asphalt, the pain subsides. The pain acts as positive punishment because it is the addition of an unpleasant stimulus that reduces the future likelihood of the person walking barefoot on a hot surface.