Your friend tells you that "negative reinforcement is a
type of punishment." Explain why your friend is VERY
WRONG about these concepts by giving the definition and an example of each concept.
What will be an ideal response?
ANSWER: Answer will include the definition differences in these two concepts with examples varying. Negative reinforcement is reinforcement, that is, it increases behavior, while punishment decreases behavior. Negative reinforcement occurs when making a response removes an unpleasant event, while punishment decreases the likelihood that a response will occur by an aversive consequence being added or a positive state of affairs being removed (response cost). For example, if you have a headache, you take an aspirin to remove the "bad" situation. The next time you are in this bad situation, you take an aspirin. Taking aspirin has been increased through negative reinforcement, the removal of an unpleasant situation (a headache). If you were to take medicine and the medicine made you violently ill (an aversive situation), you would stop taking that medicine because you received punishment.
You might also like to view...
What question would one ask a teen to BEST predict whether that teen has high self-esteem?
Donald, once poor, inherited $5 million and decided to donate $1,000 to a local charity. Donald believes he took this step because he is a kind and generous man. Donald might be demonstrating _____
a. the fundamental attribution error b. hindsight bias c. self-serving bias d. concepts of cognitive dissonance