Human behavior

 The main principle of Reinforcement theory is that an individual‘s behavior can be either controlled or changed by employing four different methods to get a desired actions or prevent negative outcomes. They are rewards also known as positive reinforcement, punishment, negative reinforcement and extinction. Positive reinforcements such as rewards, money and incentives can reinforce the behavior you want to achieve, whereas punishments are used to prevent the behavior you do not want. Extinction is a means to stop someone from performing a learned behavior. The technical term for learning the behaviors is called operant conditioning.

Positive reinforcement occurs when you want to accomplish a positive outcome.  As a result the consequence resulting in the behavior you are attempting to produce increases the probability that the desired behavior will continue. If a salesperson performs well, that salesperson may receive a bonus, which reinforces the desire to make sales because of the positive consequence of doing so.

Negative reinforcement occurs when a negative consequence is withheld.  If the behavior you desire is demonstrated, this will increase the probability that the behavior you are seeking will continue. For example, your company is opening a new office in Alaska. No one wants to move there. The company decides to let the top ten salespeople in the office pick if they go to Alaska or stay at the old office. You work very hard to be in the top ten so you can avoid the negative consequence of relocating to Alaska. You will continue to perform your best to avoid the negative consequence. However, negative reinforcement, is not the same as punishment. 

Punishment occurs when you impose a negative consequence to reduce an undesirable behavior. While negative reinforcement involves withholding a negative consequence to encourage a desirable behavior, punishment is imposing a negative consequence to discourage an unwanted behavior. For example, getting a write-up for being late to work is a punishment that is imposed on late workers to discourage workers from being late, an undesirable behavior.

The last component of operant conditioning is extinction, which is a means to stop someone's learned behavior. You attempt to extinguish a behavior by withholding the positive reinforcement that encouraged the behavior. For example, you manage a production facility that had a hard time keeping up with orders for the past few months. You used overtime pay as a positive reinforcement to bring workers in on weekends and to delay vacations. Now that you have the orders under control, you stop approving overtime. Workers no longer come in on the weekends to work. Their learned behavior has been extinguished.

Lastly the final element of Reinforcement theory is that they require an extra element to be effective and tie everything together, this element is Schedules of Reinforcement.  A schedule of reinforcements the timing of the imposition of the consequences - when and how often you provide positive or negative reinforcement. There are two primary types of schedules of reinforcement. Continuous reinforcement occurs when a person is reinforced each time the desired behavior is demonstrated, while intermittent reinforcement means that a desired behavior is not always reinforced. Since it is pretty much impracticable, if not impossible, for an organization to always provide reinforcement, intermittent reinforcement is usually employed. This theory motivates employees by the consequences of their actions.  For example, an individual wants to get a promotion so he or she works overtime every day for two months always comes in on time, and works more productively than coworkers. As a result, they will get a promotion this demonstrates how people can be motivated by setting attainable goals for themselves and performing only actions that end in positive consequences. Thus, Edward, L. Thorndike hypothesized the Law of Effect. The law states that if people behave in ways that lead to positive results to solve problems and help individuals adapt better to the in environment, then these behaviors are more likely to be repeated. On the  other hand, reinforcement theory also emphasizes the fact that punishment does not motivate people to perform better because Punished behavior is not forgotten, it's suppressed - behavior returns when punishment is no longer present Moreover people do not learn the right behaviors from being punished however they only stop the negative behavior because they develop a fear of punishment itself not the consequences of indecent actions themselves . When people no longer feel threatened by punishment there is no reason for them not to repeat the same bad behaviors. This is because they were never taught why they were wrong in the first place.  Therefore, supervisors who often use punishment instead of reinforcement, demotative employees because they are constantly instilling fear in employees rather than, implementing reinforcement in order to instill productivity and work efficiently. Punishment does not necessarily guide toward desired behavior - reinforcement tells you what to do, punishment only tells you what not to do. There are six problems with punishment. It causes increased aggression, therefore, often being punished gives people the impression that aggression is a way to cope with problems, but aggression is a bad way to resolve conflict. There are many positive ways to fix problems. Punishment creates fear that can generalize to undesirable behaviors, e.g., fear of school. 

Schedules of Reinforcement are also not good way to motivate employees for two reasons.  First people are trained by reinforcement to perform only desirable behaviors. As a result if there is no longer any reinforcements  for particular actions than after a certain amount of time people will eventually stop performing behaviors that get no results, and then these behaviors  will naturally die . For example, imagine you have a rat in a “Skinner box”. In operant conditioning if no food pellet is delivered immediately after the lever is pressed then after several attempts the rat stops pressing the lever (how long would someone continue to go to work if their employer stopped paying them?). The behavior that has been extinguished is more likely to become established patterns of behaviors or responses.   This negatively motivates employees because they only perform behaviors when they are reinforced. 

Grimsley, S. (n.d.). Reinforcement Theory in the Workplace: Definition & Examples - Video & Lesson Transcript. Retrieved April 04, 2017, from http://study.com/academy/lesson/reinforcement-theory-in-the-workplace-definition-examples-quiz.html references