Question

You are the managing director of a credit card company. Every new sales agent in your company should meet a target of inviting 200 new credit card applicants successfully in the first 3 months of their employment period.

You are required to apply the knowledge you learned from social psychology---- Four basic paradigm of OC ( " Positive reinforcement" "Negative reinforcement " "Positive punishment " "Negative punishment"  with concrete examples to help the new sales agents meet the target gradually.

Answer 1

Reinforcement

Reinforcement is a term used in operant conditioning for any act which will increase the likelyhood of that behaviors to repeat. Reinforcement always strengthens the behavior.

Positive reinforcement: positive reinforcement is when a pleasant stimuli is added inorder to enhance a behavior. Positive simply means adding something.

Example: Providing the new sales agent incentives when he accomplished the target every week. This makes it more likely he achieve the target next week.

Negative reinforcement: negative reinforcement is when an unpleasant stimuli is removed inorder to strengthen the behavior. Negative simply means removing something.

Example: Sales agent hits the target every week inorder to avoid nagging from boss. Here, nagging from boss working as an aversive stimulus. Inorder to remove this aversive stimulus, sales agent tries his maximum to accomplish the target.

Punishment

In operant conditioning, the term punishment is used for anything which will decrease the probability of occuring the behavior. Punishment is always meant to stop the behavior from happening again.

Positive punishment: positive punishment is when adding an aversive stimulus to weaken the behavior

For example: Manager verbally scolding the sales agent if he doesn't accomplish the target.

Negative punishment: negative punishment is when a pleasant stimulus is removed inorder to weaken the behaviour.

For example: Manager is taking away bonus and incentives if the sales agent doesn't hit the target.