A particular type of behavior that refers as strengthening of one’s behavior by rewarding or encouraging for some act is called as positive reinforcement. When a favorable outcome or event or reward occurs after an action; it empowers the person for maintaining or shaping the behavior further (Cherry, 2011). The purpose of praise is to reinforce and increase positive behavior. For example, a teacher praised a student for getting ‘A’ grade or a worker got bonus for good performance in the company.
A particular type of behavior that refers to the development of a behavior as an outcome of avoiding a certain action is called as negative enforcement (Cherry, 20110. For example, a person feels uncomfortable while driving at night. Then, he tries to manage all his work before evening. By the time, behavior of doing work earlier develops and need of doing at ...view middle of the document...
It involves the removal of something desirable. (Gershoff, 2002). For example, after a fight between two children for a toy; the mother simply took the toy away to make them not to fight again.
These are different types of behavior. Sometimes people unknowingly reinforce undesirable behaviors which could have bad or good result. For example, a child doesn’t complete his homework. Her teacher doubles up his home work as reinforcement. This would make him further lazier. He won’t do a little which he used to do. Actually, she reinforced a negative behavior. In such situation, a positive reinforcement would be more helpful to make him to do his work.
Another example, a person remain awakes late night. He has to go office early in morning. But because of sleeping late, he wakes up late then he rush up to reach to work. In this regards he breaks the traffic signal and drives over the speed limit. He keeps repeating the things. Finally, he develops a behavior of breaking the traffic signals and diving over speed. He does so even when not required. He actually reinforced a negative behavior unknowingly.
No one should reward wrong behavior because it leads to face further problems by the person, one is rewarding or one’s own self. Simply, one finding some behavior is annoying or not acceptable then he shouldn’t reward it. He can avoid it by familiarizing the other with consequences of his behavior or one should use negative punishment for stopping other from a wrong act.
I would like to advice the teacher to work out with positive reinforcement in the case of child. I would suggest her to set a reward for him for doing work on time. Because in order to get reward, a child will try to do his homework and subsequently the habit of not doing assignment on time would be removed.
Gershoff, E. T. (2002). Corporal punishment by parents and associated child behavior and experiences: A meta-analysis and theoretical review. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 539 to 579
Cherry, K. (2011, April 29). Positive reinforcement. Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/b/2011/04/29/positive-reinforcement-psychology-definition-of-the-week.htm