Over the years people have voiced many criticisms about the use of reinforcement and punish- ment with school-age children. Some are ill founded, whereas others should be taken more seri- ously. We’ll first examine common “bogus” complaints and then turn to more genuine concerns.
Bogus Complaints
Some criticisms directed toward the use of reinforcement and punishment in the classroom reflect either a misunderstanding of behaviorist principles or a lack of awareness of empirical findings:
◆ Reinforcement is bribery. The bribery argument is probably the most frequent complaint
leveled against the use of reinforcement in the classroom. However, the word bribery implies that
the behavior being reinforced is somehow illegal or unethical. On the contrary, the appropriate use of reinforcement in the classroom can facilitate the attainment of educational objectives, all of which involve academically and socially desirable behaviors.
◆ Reinforcement leads to dependence on concrete, external rewards for appropriate behavior.
Some critics propose that students should engage in learning simply for learning’s sake; by rein- forcing learning, they argue, teachers foster the expectation that students will always receive rewards for their accomplishments. This argument can be countered in two ways. First, as you learned in Chapter 4 , reinforcement doesn’t necessarily involve material reinforcers. The sensible teacher will rely on social reinforcers, activities, feedback, and intrinsic reinforcers (e.g., feelings of success or accomplishment) instead of material reinforcers whenever possible.
Second, even when a teacher must use material reinforcers to change behavior, these reinforc- ers bring about desired changes that apparently will not occur any other way. Reinforcement is often
useful when more traditional methods of changing behavior have failed to increase important academic and social skills or to decrease counterproductive behaviors. If the choice comes down to teaching Johnny to read by reinforcing him for reading or else not teaching him to read at all, obviously Johnny should learn to read. We must remember, too, that whenever material reinforc- ers are used, pairing them with social events (e.g., praise) can create secondary (social) reinforcers that can then be used instead.
◆ Reinforcing one student for being good teaches other students to be bad. “Hmm,” Leslie thinks.
“Linda has been such a loudmouth the past few weeks that the teacher is now giving her raisins so she’ll keep quiet. Maybe if I start shooting my mouth off, I’ll get raisins too.” If students are thinking along these lines, something is clearly wrong with how reinforcement is being adminis- tered. All students should be reinforced for appropriate behaviors—perhaps with praise, positive
feedback, or the intrinsic reinforcers that success experiences often bring. If a material reinforcer such as raisins is the only reinforcer that will work with a particular student, it should be given
discreetly and in private.
◆ Punishment reduces self-esteem. Certain forms of punishment, especially psychological
punishment (e.g., public humiliation or ridicule), can indeed reduce self-esteem. But mild forms of punishment, such as brief time-outs or gentle reprimands, typically have little negative impact on students’ long-term emotional well-being. In fact, when punishment can help students gain more productive and socially productive behaviors, it can indirectly enhance their self-confidence
over the long run.
◆ Eliminating a problem behavior doesn’t eliminate the underlying cause of the behavior; thus, other behavioral manifestations of that underlying cause may appear. This concern is sometimes a
legitimate one, but on many occasions changing a person’s behavior indirectly addresses its underlying cause as well. For example, consider the girl who is inappropriately aggressive on the playground. This girl might truly want to interact effectively her peers, but aggression is the only way she knows of initiating social interaction. Teaching and reinforcing the girl for good social skills, combined with punishing aggressive behaviors, not only help her develop friendships but also address the underlying cause of her aggression: her desire for companionship.
Pssst, kid ! Want to learn
to read?
Genuine Concerns
A few major criticisms of using reinforcement and punishment in instructional contexts should be taken more seriously:
◆ Encouraging productive behaviors through reinforcement alone ignores cognitive factors that may be interfering with learning. When students are capable of learning a new skill but aren’t
motivated to do so, consistent reinforcement may be all that’s needed to bring about the desired behavior change. But when cognitive deficiencies interfere with the acquisition of a new skill (as insufficient background knowledge or undiagnosed learning disabilities might do), rein- forcement alone may not be effective. In the latter situation, teachers may need to employ teaching techniques based more on cognitive learning theories—theories that we’ll explore in later chapters.
◆ Reinforcement of some behaviors may interfere with maximal learning and performance over the long run. Reinforcement for accomplishing a certain task can focus students’ attention and
effort more on getting the task done quickly, perhaps at a minimally acceptable level or perhaps by cheating, rather than on learning from the task. Especially when teachers want their students
to engage in complex thinking processes—for example, to think flexibly and creatively about academic subject matter—then extrinsic reinforcement simply for task accomplishment can be counterproductive (Brophy, 2004; McCaslin & Good, 1996; also see Chapter 16 ).
◆ Extrinsic reinforcement of a personally enjoyable behavior can undermine the intrinsically rein- forcing value of the behavior. People often engage in activities because of the intrinsic rewards (e.g.,
feelings of pleasure or accomplishment) that the activities bring. A number of research studies have revealed that enjoyable behaviors can be increased with extrinsic reinforcers but will then
decrease in frequency once the reinforcers are removed. For example, in one study, preschool
children who were promised a fancy “Good Player Award” for drawing pictures were, later on,
less likely to draw pictures in a free-play situation than either (1) children who were given a
similar award but not told about it in advance or (2) children who weren’t reinforced for drawing pictures (Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973). And in a study in which college students were asked to solve a series of puzzles, students who were given money for correct solutions—but not stu-
dents who were given only positive feedback—were less likely to continue working on puzzles once reinforcement stopped (Deci, 1971).
Extrinsic reinforcers are most likely to undermine intrinsic motivation when (1) initial interest in an activity is high; (2) newly offered reinforcers are tangible (e.g., toys or money); (3) people know in advance that such reinforcers will be coming; and (4) simply doing the activity—rather than doing it well —is reinforced (Cameron, 2001; Deci, Koestner, & Ryan,
2001). Possibly the depression effect is at work to some extent: As you discovered in Chapter 4 ,
human beings and nonhumans alike don’t like having the quality or quantity of reinforcement reduced unexpectedly. We’ll consider a second possible explanation of this extrinsic-undermining- intrinsic effect in our discussion of self-determination in Chapter 16 .
◆ Students ultimately need to learn not only how to succeed but also how to fail. Even when rein-
forcement is intrinsic, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. If students rarely experience anything but success in their academic endeavors, they won’t know how to handle the inevitable failures and frustrations that will eventually come their way in school and in the workplace. Furthermore, students often learn as much from their mistakes as from their successes (Bandura, 2008; Minsky, 2006).
◆ A punished behavior isn’t forgotten and may return. Punishment suppresses a response: It
makes the response less likely to occur. However, this suppression effect is often only temporary: The punished behavior may eventually reappear, perhaps when the punishment stops or when the punisher is absent (Appel & Peterson, 1965; Lerman & Vorndran, 2002; Pfiffner & O’Leary, 1987; B. F. Skinner, 1938).
◆ Punishment can have negative side effects. Obviously, severe physical punishment can
lead to bodily injury, and harsh psychological punishment is apt to have a long-term nega- tive impact on emotional well-being. Even less severe punishments involving aversive stim- uli (those that constitute Punishment I rather than Punishment II) can lead to a variety of counterproductive emotional responses—anger, fear, anxiety, and so on. Anger may, in turn, lead to aggression, especially in people already predisposed to making aggressive responses (Berkowitz & LePage, 1967; Landrum & Kauffman, 2006; G. C. Walters & Grusec, 1977). Furthermore, the fear and anxiety that punishment elicits can, through classical condition- ing, become associated with the context in which it occurs (Lerman & Vorndran, 2002; B. F. Skinner, 1938). For example, when a teacher punishes a student, that punishment (the UCS) may be associated with the teacher, the task, or the classroom, any of which can then become conditioned stimuli (CSs) that elicit fear and anxiety (CRs). In a similar manner, when an athletic coach continually yells at children for their poor performance during a game, negative attitudes toward the sport may result (Feltz, Chaase, Moritz, & Sullivan, 1999; R. E. Smith & Smoll, 1997).
We must remember, too, that any stimulus that has become fear- and anxiety-inducing because of its association with punishment may lead to escape or avoidance behaviors (see Chapter 4 ). For instance, escape and avoidance responses at school take many forms, including inattention, cheating, lying, refusal to participate in classroom activities, and truancy (e.g., Gardner, Wacker, & Boelter, 2009; B. F. Skinner, 1938; Taylor & Romanczyk, 1994).
◆ Improving behavior in one context may lead to more frequent behavior problems in another.
When reinforcement or punishment is consistently used in one situation, overall behavior may improve in that situation but decline in others—a phenomenon known as behavioral contrast (e.g., S. J. Simon, Ayllon, & Milan, 1982; Wahler, Vigilante, & Strand, 2004). For example, some children who behave badly at school may be described by parents as being “little angels” at home. Such children are possibly being held to strict behavioral rules on the home front, with severe punishment following any infractions. If so, they may engage in the forbidden behaviors at school, where they can do so with milder consequences.
Despite such concerns, reinforcement and punishment can be highly effective means of bringing about desired behavior changes, as we’ll see in the next two sections.