organisms to get rid of painful stimuli or avoid and escape from them provide negative reinforcement . Thus, negative reinforcement leads to learning of avoidance and escape responses. For instance, one learns to put on woollen clothes, burn firewood or use electric heaters to avoid the unpleasant cold weather. One learns to move away from dangerous stimuli because they provide negative reinforcement.
It may be noted that negative reinforcement is not punishment. Use of punishment reduces or suppresses the response while a negative reinforcer increases the probability of avoidance or escape response. For instance, drivers and co-drivers wear their seat belts to avoid getting injured in case of an accident or to avoid being fined by the traffic police. It should be understood that no punishment suppresses a response permanently.
Mild and delayed punishment has no effect. The stronger the punishment, the more lasting is the suppression effect but it is not permanent. Sometimes punishment has no effect irrespective of its intensity. On the contrary, the punished person may develop dislike and In the above situation the response is instrumental in getting the food.
That is why, this type of learning is also called instrumental conditioning . Examples of instrumental conditioning abound in our everyday life. Children who want to have some sweets in the absence of their mother learn to locate the jar in which mother hides the sweets for safekeeping and eat it. Children learn to be polite and say ‘please’ to get favours from their parents and others.
One learns to operate mechanical gadgets such as radio, camera, T.V., etc. based on the principle of instrumental conditioning. As a matter of fact human beings learn short cuts to attain desired goals or ends through instrumental conditioning. Determinants of Operant Conditioning You have noted that operant or instrumental conditioning is a form of learning in which behaviour is learned, maintained or changed through its consequences .
Such consequences are called reinforcers . A reinforcer is defined as any stimulus or event, which increases the probability of the occurrence of a (desired) response . A reinforcer has numerous features,