i received several requests to put out some more sample questions to help practice the idea of operant conditioning that positive and negative reinforcement positive and negative punishment i've had a lot of good feedback on my original video that explains this concept in more detail and gives some examples but as a really quick refresher we know that if we are reinforcing something that means that we want the behavior to continue we are encouraging or rewarding the behavior and punishment is seeking to decrease or discourage the behavior positive does not mean good and negative does not mean bad in this case rather positive means you are adding or introducing something new and negative means you are taking something away so we'll look at a few practice examples here starting with how we would break down a scenario question we'd ask what is the behavior and is that behavior really good that we want to reinforce it or does it make us pissed that we want to punish it make it decrease so do we want the behavior to repeat happen again with reinforcement or do we want to put a stop to it end it make it not happen again in that case punishment and the second question is are we in order to reinforce or punish are we adding something are we taking something away let's look at some examples here a family institute's a swear jar when someone in the family uses a curse word they have to put some coins in the square jar this is an example of so let's break it down here what's the behavior the behavior is cursing and that makes us really pissed and we want to put a stop to it so we're going to do some punishment to try to decrease or discourage that behavior and the next question is are we adding something or taking something away well what it is here is money and we're taking away your money you have to give away the money that you want to hang on to so we're taking away something that you like in order to punish the behavior which makes this negative punishment every time a child attends sunday school they get to put a sticker on their attendance chart this is an example of well the behavior is attending regularly that's you can assume based on this prompt something that the people implementing this chart want to reinforce they want that to continue so they want to do something to encourage you to keep doing that behavior and in this case the the sticker is something new you didn't have the sticker before and now we're giving you the sticker so that's a positive reinforcement let's look at another one a professor explains that if students earn an a on the first exam and an a on the midterm they do not have to take the final exam the professor hopes that this will make students more likely to study hard early on in the semester i had this in college where if you got a certain grade on a certain number of exams throughout the course you didn't then need to take the cumulative final the behavior here is studying and this is a good behavior we want to reinforce it the professor is trying to increase that behavior not decrease it so it's reinforcement and they're taking away something undesirable in this case you do not have to take the final exam so it's negative because you're removing something from the equation but this is negative reinforcement so your reward for doing the behavior is you don't have to do something that you wouldn't like to do otherwise when a cat jumps on the kitchen counter the owner yells no and swats at the cat or maybe you use one of those little squirt bottles to spray the cat the behavior would be your cat just chilling on your kitchen counter which is probably not the most sanitary thing or the safest if you're using the stove and that's something that we don't want so we want to punish it to try to decrease that behavior or discourage it and in this case we're adding something yelling lunging at the cat squirting the cat with the water those are all positive things in the sense that we are introducing this behavior the cat wasn't getting yelled at or squirted before it's positive something new is happening rather than taking away something so that's why it's positive punishment and after a teenager is caught trying to sneak out of the house at night his parents tell him he's grounded that he can't hang out with his friends this weekend sneaking out is the behavior we want to punish it and to do so we're going to take away a privilege negative so it's negative punishment a child is only allowed to have dessert if he eats all of his broccoli so eating your veggies is the behavior we want to reinforce that we want to increase that behavior and we're going to give you something you didn't have before adding something dessert which makes it positive reinforcement if we're going to continue with our broccoli theme let's look at a few other examples if a child is told he doesn't have to help clean up with the dishes if he eats all his broccoli this is negative reinforcement it's just another type right before we were positively reinforcing by giving him dessert as a reward but in this case we're still reinforcing trying to get him to eat the broccoli but we're doing so with a negative strategy again that doesn't mean it's a bad strategy it means we're taking away something hey you don't have to do the dishes you get out of get out of that chore that you didn't like and that is your reward for eating your broccoli that you don't have to do something you didn't want to do or if the child's yelled at if he doesn't eat all of his broccoli that's positive punishment we are punishing the behavior and doing so by introducing something undesirable whereas if the child doesn't eat his broccoli and he then doesn't get to play outside after dinner you're still punishing but this is negative because you're taking away a privilege or something that's wanted now finally for some extra credit here's a real life example if i work too long here at my computer my little dog starts whining and wants attention and wants me to hang out with her if i were to give her a bone to keep her busy and keep her quiet so that i can work in peace without any noises in the background what could i expect to happen in the future well as you might have guessed this is actually positively reinforcing the behavior so even though i don't want it to continue the whining i don't want that to continue if i just give her a bone to keep her quiet in effect i'm positively reinforcing by rewarding it and so i can expect the behavior to increase a better solution would be to say no very firmly to my dog and ignore her so that she learns that nothing good happens from whining and then she's she's punished in a sense and doesn't have that reinforcement to make her want to keep doing the same thing that i don't want her to do