Punishment is when a response is followed by a stimulus that suppresses the frequency of a response in the future and this stimulus is called the punisher.

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Punishment is when a response is followed by a stimulus that suppresses the frequency of a response in the future and this stimulus is called the punisher.

Bandura and Walters (1959) stated that children who are made to suffer grow up to be adults who make others suffer (as cited in Chance, 1999).  They begin to deal with their problems in later life with troublesome behaviour and inflicting pain on others just like their punishers did to them when they were younger.  

Skinner suggested that it is possible to construct a society in which punishable behaviours occur infrequently or never.  ‘Basically if behavioural technology was used to control behaviour in nonpunitive ways, good behaviours would be common, and there would be little or no need for punitive measures’ (Nye, 1993, pg. 104).  Skinner’s earliest work shows that punishment only has a temporary suppressive effect, rather than permanently decreasing responding.  Conclusions form Estes’ (1944) work shows that within limits more intense and frequent punishment produces greater response suppression providing that the punishment stimulus is reliable and immediately follows the response (as cited in Leslie, 1996, pg. 256).  Misbehaviour persists in spite of punishment because it is also reinforced.  This happens when the alternative of other behaviours are so daunting and unknown that they think they may receive more punishment for the behaviour they have already carried out.  ‘Whenever we are punished, more and more elements of our environment can become negative reinforcers and punishers’ (Murray, 1989, pg 78).  We begin to react to most of the environments, things and people around us as ‘natural punishers’.  Our societal environment becomes our punisher or as Murray phrases it ‘Anyone who uses shock becomes a shock’ (1989, pg 79).  Also the punisher is reinforced for what they do.  It is a sense of power for them, that they can control one’s behaviours by using coercion on them.  Yes, this is a very bleak and maybe exaggerated view of how punishment can be and can evolve, but it is, unfortunately, not unknown.  

The most reasonable objective in using punishment is to stop undesirable behaviour.  It suppresses unwanted conduct, however, only for a short time and unfortunately brings along with it many side effects.  There are numerous types of punishment used in our society toady and they basically fall into two main categories, positive and negative.  Positive punishment occurs when the onset of aversive stimuli suppresses behaviours.  ‘Negative reinforcement instils a narrow behavioural repertoire, leaving us fearful of novelty, afraid to explore’ (Murray, 1989, pg. 85).  The forms punishment occurs in are physical, reprimands, time-out and response-cost.  Piaget would surely disagree profusely with the methods and ideas we apply when we spank a child for its erroneous behaviour due to their apparent learning and awareness capacities.  He believes that children think qualitatively different than adults.

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A lot of Piaget’s views of the development of children are still extremely respected and in spite of a large amount of research criticising his views, none of his ideas were eradicated and still give great strength to the argument against punishment towards children.  If the child has no sense of understanding and can’t see anything except from their own perspective, due to their egocentric processes, then nothing will be gained from slapping them but a parent’s guilt and a child’s hurt and fear and the future side effects all anti-punishment people know of such as future low grades, early ...

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