Positive Reinforcement

Reinforcement is a major component when it comes to learning. Without it, the individuals who learn would have difficulty learning from their mistakes and realizing when they do a good job. Reinforcement has a very simple meaning and that is, strengthen. In the field of Psychology, reinforcement refers to anything stimulus that strengthens a response (Ref 5). When it comes to learning, reinforcement can be used in a classroom, outside of the classroom and in most types of experiments. For example, whenever a student scores a high grade on a test, the teacher congratulates him/her. This is an example of a positive reinforcement.
There are four main types of reinforcement. These reinforcements are: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, …show more content…
One of the most obvious pros is, it increases the likelihood that the action will be repeated (Ref 8). For individuals, especially young individuals, it is important that they continue to exhibit good habits. If an individual frequently exhibits good habits and is never shown positive feedback, it will not be long until the individual stops performing these actions. Now, if the individual is always shown gratitude for his actions, then he/she will continue to perform them. Another pro of positive reinforcement is, it can potentially decrease negative actions (Ref 8). For example, if an individual who is always shown gratitude for holding the door open, it will make them feel happy and give them a positive feeling. These positive feelings will reduce negative feelings and will decrease the frequency of disruptive …show more content…
In this experiment, one group of students were exposed to token reinforcement and the second group of students were not. At the end of the school semester, the group of students who were in the group that used token reinforcement had a cumulative GPA significantly higher than the group who did not use token reinforcement (Ref 12). Why did the students in the group that used token reinforcement have a significantly higher GPA than the group that did not? It is believed that the group who had the higher GPA also had the higher moral. Moral can have a big influence when it comes to learning. For instance, the group of students whose moral was higher, looked forward to coming to school and learning. Eventually, leading them to enjoy learning and understanding topics easier. On the contrary, the group of students whose moral was lower, may not have looked forward to coming to school and may have had difficulty learning the different