In: Psychology
Reinforcement and Punishment are of two types; negative and positive. However, reinforcement increases the likelihood of a certain behaviour whereas, punishment decreases the occurrence of a particular behaviour. For instance, your alarm rings at six in the morning everyday. Your mother puts on umpteen alarms between 0600hrs and 0605hrs. She knows that you would snooze your alarm and go back to sleep. Over the week, you wake up at 0600hrs as soon as your alarm rings because you want to avoid your sleep being broken due to the multiple alarms that would keep buzzing in the span of five minutes. This is an example of positive punishment.
Joey wants to watch television; however, his mother would not let him watch it. She asks him to finish his homework before he could watch television. This is an example of negative reinforcement. This form of reinforcement increases the likelihood of the occurrence of the desired behaviour.