Positive Reinforcement In Psychology Essay

In psychology, the term reinforce refers to the strengthening of a specific stimuli. In other words, it means to increase the chance of invoking a specific response. There are several strategies that can be used when attempting to influence someone’s behaviour. Strategies such as positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, punishments, and rewards. While varying in tactics these strategies all attempt to do the same thing, invoke a specific response. The metaphor of the carrot and the stick, signify both reward and punishment. This metaphor is explained through a situation; where a farmer dangles a carrot in front of a mule as a reward and hits it from behind with a stick as punishment. When trying to motivate someone both tactics are commonly

Skinner, positive reinforcement is when you specifically reward someone; to increase the probability of that same response occurring in the future. The concept is that reinforced behaviour tends to reoccur and therefore become stronger. When behaviour is not reinforced it is less likely to occur and therefore becomes weaker. Behaviour strengthens through positive reinforcement because it rewards an individual for a specific action. An example of how positive reinforcement works would be an experiment done by B.F. Skinner. The experiment worked by placing a hungry rat inside a box. On one side of the box was a lever, if pushed a food pellet would fall into the box. Over time, it was observed that whenever they put the rat inside the box, it would almost immediately push the lever to obtain a food pellet. By completing the specific action of pushing the lever they were rewarded with a food pellet. The rat would repeat this act of pushing the lever for a food pellet, each time reinforcing this specific behaviour. In our daily lives the most common way of using positive reinforcement is through praise and rewards, an example of this would be how an elementary school teacher hands out stickers to reward students for their good actions. This strategy is effective, because it makes a person feel good for their arduous work. Positive reinforcement is very helpful because it strengthens behaviours through