Question

Imagine that you are the parent of 4 year-old twins who are very active and continue to draw on everything in the house with crayons, despite you repeatedly telling them to not do that. A. How could you use negative punishment to decrease this behavior instead of using positive or physical punishment? B. Describe why policymakers and developmental psychologists urge parents to use alternatives to physical punishment, such as forms of negative punishment. Be sure to mention potential side effects of punishment in your answer.

Answer 1

Negative punishment is the removal of a pleasant stimulus to decrease the chances of occurrence of undesirable behavior in the future. So if I remove crayons (pleasant stimulus) from the situation, the 4-year-old twins would not be able to draw on everything available in the house. I can use negative punishment to decrease the behavior by taking the crayons away from the twins, whenever they exhibit this behavior.

Policymakers and developmental psychologists urge parents to use alternatives to physical punishment, such as forms of negative punishment because when parents use physical punishment, the children can harbor negative feelings towards their own parents. They can harbor negative feelings such as anger, shame, guilt, and fear and associate these feelings with the behavior that is being modified. For example, if I used physical punishment for behavior modification, like hitting the twins with an object or a stick, it would only make them resentful and guilty. It also affects their mental development. It also does not guarantee success in the long term. Negative punishment, on the other hand, is a better alternative to physical punishment because it does not involve "inflicting physical pain'. It does not lead to any potential negative side effects (discussed in the section below) in the future.

Potential side effects of punishment are as follows:-

It can lead to increased aggression in general or even aggression towards the aggressor. It can lead to antisocial behavior. It can lead to the modeling of the same behavior as children are extremely impressionable. It can lead to mental disorders like depression, anxiety, PTSD, etc. In some cases, it can lead to delinquency. It can lead to poor relationships and abusive relationships.