Principles of Operant Conditioning:

There are mainly two principles to Operant Conditioning, Reinforcement and Punishment. Reinforcement can be further categorized as negative and positive reinforcement. First of all, let us look at what actually is reinforcement. According to (Yunus, Razali, & Jantan ( 2011), reinforcement is defined as any event that increases the probability of response. Therefore, reinforcement is something which will increase the response that is made by the organism. It is important to distinguish between positive and negative reinforcement. Here is a video to further understand reinforcement theory.

Positive reinforcement:

            A positive reinforce is a stimulus which will increase the probability of the particular behavior occurring in the future (Henton & Iversen, 2011). If we look at the experiment by skinner, a positive reinforcement was made. The behavior was pressing the bar, a desired response was given to that behavior, a food pallet and therefore the action continued. Here the positive reinforcement is made through rewarding the food which increased the behavior happening again.

Negative reinforcement:

            A negative reinforcement is a stimulus which when removed would increase the probability of particular action or behavior occurring in the future (Cohen, 2009). The behavior will be more frequent or will increase if we remove the particular action. The objective of negative reinforcement is to increase the probability of particular action occurring in the future. In the Skinner box, at first there was an electric shock introduced when the rat jumped around, but when the rat started to press the bar, the shock was switched off which made the action, pressing the bar increase.

Punishment:

            Punishment is often regarded as negative reinforcement. But these two are separate elements. The objective of punishment is to decrease the probability of particular action occurring in the future, while the objective of negative reinforcement is to increase the probability of particular action occurring in the future (Cohen, 2009). For instance, if the rat was given an electric shock every time the rat pressed the bar, there is unlikely probability that he will repeat this behavior.