Skinner Article
When you discuss Skinner you start talking about how he wanted to make psychology a science by using what are called controlled experiments in order to measure the behavior by influencing cognitive psychology. Skinner believed in operant conditioning which is the theory that an individual will modify their behavior due to their consequence from that behavior. For instance if a behavior is a behavior that you do not want to happen again, then the consequence would be to punish the behavior. This would cause the behavior to either stop all together or to at least happen less frequent. Now on the other hand you have what is considered a negative punishment which is the removal of a child’s favorite toy resulting in a decrease in the behavior. Just as there is a positive and negative in punishment there is a positive and negative in reinforcement to a behavior that you want to be continued. Positive reinforcement is rewarding a behavior that you would like to see more frequently and the negative reinforcement is by removing the negative stimulus therefore the behavior would occur more frequently.
Everybody with children understands this study because you use it on a day to day basis when it comes to the way your children behave. For instance when a child is little and they put away their toys when they are done with them you reward them with either a sweet treat or a quarter so that they repeat this behavior when they are done playing with their toys. This is