Most people have taken a psych 101 course and have some basic knowledge of behaviorism. Pavlov’s dogs, reinforcement, punishment…. Behaviorism is an incredibly useful tool and framework to view the world through. It’s definitely incomplete. But it’s one part of the puzzle of human behavior. Here are some behaviorism concepts that I think everyone should understand.

Reinforcement vs. Punishment: Reinforcement is something that makes a behavior more likely. Punishment is something that makes a behavior less likely. You cannot know if something is reinforcing or punishing until you see the effect it has on the person’s behavior.

Sometimes, you can think that you’re reinforcing a behavior, but in reality, you’re punishing it and vice versa. For me, there are certain kinds of attention that I really dislike. One of these is when people point out certain things about me, like my looks or clothes. After wearing down my sneakers until they had holes in them, I finally admitted I needed to buy a new pair. The people around me started complimenting me on my new sneakers. They were inadvertently punishing me wearing new clothes.
One concept a lot of people misunderstand is positive and negative punishment and reinforcement. Most people assume that hitting is negative reinforcement because hitting is bad. However, it is actually positive punishment. The words “positive” and “negative” are not moral judgments in this case, it simply refers to whether something is added or removed. Reinforcement is something that makes a behavior more likely, and punishment is something that makes a behavior less likely – regardless of if the method of getting the change is good or bad. Positive means adding something in order to get the behavior change, and negative means taking away something to get the behavior change.

	Reinforcement	Punishment
Positive	Getting your paycheck makes you more likely to do work	Your teacher gives you extra homework because you did not submit your homework on time
Negative	The loud, annoying sound your car makes when you forget to turn on your seat belt makes you more likely to put on your seat belt so the sound will stop	Your teacher makes you stay in during recess because you were talking during class

Functions of Behavior: This is incomplete and doesn’t capture everything. But it’s a useful heuristic. There are f...

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