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What Is Social Reinforcement?
Reinforcement can either encourage or discourage us from engaging in a behavior.
How Does Social Reinforcement Work?
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In a famous study conducted in 1968, researchers looked at school-age children who spent little time studying.
The children were then given praise and attention for their study efforts.
In some cases, thisattentiondoes not even need to come from an outside source.
Self-reinforcement is a concept highly related to social reinforcement that involves giving yourself approval for your own behavior.
When you do something well, you might praise yourself and feel proud of your accomplishment.
If you do poorly, you might engage in self-recrimination or self-blame.
4 Types of Reinforcement
There are four different types of reinforcement.
They differ in how they encourage or discourage behaviors.
These examples illustrate how each throw in of reinforcement might happen in a social setting.
Positive Reinforcement
You’ll often see teachers and parents using positive reinforcement with children.
For instance, some classrooms have a sticker chart to reward good behavior.
Reinforcement is contextual, in that the bang out of behavior being reinforced is relative to the situation.
While smoking is a harmful practice, a teen may engage in it because they’re influenced bypeer pressure.
Extinction can also result from a negative experience.
For instance, taste aversion is linked to extinction.
In social reinforcement, an example of extinction might happen if people stop complimenting you on your fashion choices.
Research shows, however, that just because a behavior is gone doesn’t mean it’s lost forever.
Punishment
There are two types of punishment reinforcement: positive and negative.
Positive punishment means actively penalizing someone.
For instance, a child who misbehaves during class might get sent to the principal’s office.
This is a positive punishment.
Is Social Reinforcement Effective?
Hall RV, Lund D, Jackson D.Effects of teacher attention on study behavior.J Appl Behav Anal.
2018;43(8):1639-1650. doi:10.1038/s41386-018-0047-3
American Academy of Pediatrics.Positive reinforcement through rewards.
2017;143(10):1082-1115. doi:10.1037/bul0000113
Lattal KM, Lattal KA.Facets of Pavlovian and operant extinction.Behav Processes.
U.S. Department of Justice.National Institute of Justice: Five things about deterrence.
