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  © 2008
  University of Idaho
  All rights reserved.
  Psychology Dept.
  University of Idaho
  Design - P&D  CTI

Thus as we see on the bottom two lines, a very intense punisher that produces minimal suppression is considered to be a mild punisher, while low intensity stimuli that can produce complete suppression are considered to be extremely severe punishers.  So again, it is not really the intensity that’s important, it is how much suppression that you actually get that is probably more important.  So for example, you could spank a kid really, really hard but not get very much behavioral change.  Where as, if you took away their favorite toy, you would get a significant reduction in the behavior.  So again, the intensity and severity of the stimulus are the first variables that are important in relation to punishment administration. 

The second variable that relates to punishment administration is shown in slide three, and that is the manner of introduction.  The articles and the research are extremely clear and go something like this.  The sudden introduction of punishment produces much greater response suppression than if the punishment intensity is gradually increased.  That is, don’t begin with some mild punisher, make it intense.  If you use gradual small punishers and increase the intensity, it also takes significantly greater punishers to suppress the unwanted behavior than if you’d given the full amount immediately. 

Now, of course, this is extremely problematic for human rights organizations, the criminal justice system and even parents out there.  Parents don’t want to even spank their kids or hurt their kids or cause their kids a lot of trauma and pain.  But, if they gradually increase the punishing stimulus, the effect becomes ineffective.

In addition, as we see in slide four, the manner of introduction is also important for other stimuli as well.  For example, if you give an intense punisher first, oftentimes, milder punishers that had no effect before can become extremely effective.

Generally, gradual and low intensity punishers lead only to temporary suppression.  Moderate intensity punishers lead to partial suppression, and intense punishers lead to total suppression.  So manner of introduction is extremely important in relation to the system.

Now as we see in slide five, intensity can also differ amongst individuals.  Let’s say that you are a typical college student going to a typical college/university and you go out and get a speeding ticket that costs you 200 bucks.  That will significantly impact you because most college students don’t have 200 bucks they can throw away.  On the other hand, let’s say that Bill Gates or some other extremely rich individual was out there and got a $200 ticket for speeding.  Well, they would not even worry about it because Bill Gates makes more money  tying his shoe than many people make in a month.  So, a $200 ticket for speeding is nothing for some folks, whereas for you and I, it impacts us a lot more.  However, if both of us received a public whipping with canes or something, that may effect you the same.  So the intensity, depending upon what the punishing stimulus is, can differ amongst individuals and amongst organisms.

So let’s begin by talking about the next variable and that is called the immediacy of punishment.  The immediacy of punishment, as we see in slide six, is extremely, extremely important.  And the research is very, very clear.  The longer the delay between the response and the punisher, the less effective the punisher becomes.  Well how long can we actually do this?  Generally, immediate punishment is no more effective than stimulus delivery within the first hour.  So basically up through the first hour, the punishment given has basically the same effectiveness.  However, after the first hour, effectiveness basically drops off.  And the longer after that first hour it is, the more ineffective the punisher becomes.  The ideal situation, of course, is when an organism makes a response, they immediately receive some kind of punishing stimulus.  However, usually that is not the case in the real world.  Consequently, the effectiveness of the punisher usually is reduced.

Now related to immediacy is what we call punishment certainty.  This is shown in slide seven.  Punishing stimuli can have high intensity, can also have good immediacy, but they will be very ineffective if there is a very low certainty that the organism will actually be receiving some kind of punishment stimulus.  So, the greater the certainty of receiving the punishing stimulus, the greater the response suppression will be.  Let’s give a classic example (shown in slide eight).  If you have a high intensity punishing stimulus but a low certainty of apprehension, you will usually perform the behavior.  Let’s give an example. Let’s say that you can rob a bank get 10 million dollars.  However, if you get caught, you get executed.  Now let’s change the probability of being caught.  Let’s say there’s a 1 in 10 million chance of apprehension versus a 1 in a thousand chance of apprehension. In all likelihood many people would take that 1 in 10 million chance of apprehension, but very few would take that 1 in one thousand chance of apprehension.  So in essence, the probability of being caught becomes extremely important.  This relates to a concept that we call deterrence and is shown in slide nine.  Deterrence basically relates to this concept.  What is the probability of me being caught doing something? When I do a particular behavior, the higher the odds of success, the more likely you will engage in the behavior, even when the severity of the punishing stimulus is very high.  Now, there are two different types of deterrence and shown on slide 10.  The first type of deterrence is called General Deterrence.  General deterrence prevents you from engaging in the act in the first place.  This is what most of us operate on.  Most of us usually don’t go out and rob a bank, or go out and try to kill people because of some particular aspect of being caught.  In contrast, there is another type of deterrence.  That is called specific Deterrence.  Specific deterrence relates to preventing you from repeating the behavior after being caught.  This is oftentimes what we see in relation to the criminal justice system.  A person is caught for a particular crime, they then receive some kind of punishment.  Whatever the punishment, it is supposed to prevent a person  from repeating the behavior once they get out. 

This will depend upon a variety of different variables.  For example, some people get caught driving while intoxicated and go to jail for a day.  How effective then is that particular type of sentence in relation to preventing you from getting a second DWI?  Ultimately, specific deterrence is extremely important in preventing recidivism.

Now the next major variable that relates to punishment administration is the availability of unpunished response.  This is shown in slide 11.  Even low intensity punishers can be effective when alternative unpunished behavior is available that produce reinforcement.  With no alternatives, you need higher intensity punishing stimuli.  So, you can make a very low intensity punisher extremely effective when you give some kind of alternative behavior those results in some type of reinforcement stimulus.  Further, the reinforcement stimulus does not need to be very large, it just needs to be there.  So, things such as criticism can become extremely important and extremely intense punishers when they no longer produce some kind of reinforcement. 

Next variable, as we see in slide 12, relates to how often the punishing behavior is reinforced.  Punishers are more effective when the punished behavior is no longer reinforced.  In addition, the more reinforcements for the behavior, the less effective the punisher becomes.   This relates to intensity as well.  So, a 10 million dollar reinforcement will have much more impact than a 5,000 dollar reinforcer.  Whereas, if I have a 10 million dollar reinforcer, the punisher that I receive of five years in jail is very, very ineffective.  While the 5000 dollar reinforcer becomes extremely ineffective.  That also relates to punishing intensity.

Now let’s take another example of this concept .  This is seen in slide 13 and occurs with kids a lot.  A kid in the class is in the class and he shoots a spit wad at somebody.  The teacher takes the person, puts him in the corner and says stand in the corner.  Now what happens with the kid.  First, the kid gets lots of attention from other kids while they’re standing in the corner or after they have been standing in the corner.  As a result the behavior goes up. 

A second major example relates to drug selling behavior by juveniles.  The rap sheet in this case isn’t a kind of a punishing stimulus or something that’s bad.  In contrast, the rap sheet is “Well man, I did a lot of stuff and I’m really cool.”  So, lets say you sell drugs.  If you get caught, what happens, usually some slap on the wrist  (juvenile detention or something similar to that).  Then what happens when the kid gets back, gets arrested, or whatever.  Well, the kid gets incredible amounts of attention from their peers.  “You went to the joint, you were in, wow that’s really cool.”  So these are just a couple of examples of what can happen.

The next major variable is if the punisher is delivered before the reinforcer.  This is shown in slide 14.  In essence, punishment is exceptionally more effective when it’s delivered before some behavior is reinforced.  Early studies also found that it was more effective, but today it’s not so clear cut.  This relates to a concept that we call self-control or self-management and shown in slide 15.

Self-control or self-management relates to immediate versus delayed consequences for a particular behavior.  There are several major types.  I’ve listed some here give you an example.  These are shown in slide 16.  Let’s take the small immediate positive versus a delayed large negative.  The classic example is smoking cigarettes.  I smoke a cigarette and I get a small or medium positive, I feel good.  But the long term consequences are ultimately lung cancer, heart disease, and even death. 

There are three others listed here as well, basically small immediate negatives,  and delayed large negatives.  The small immediate negative is going to the dentist.  Nobody likes to go to the dentist.  On the other hand, if you don’t go to the dentist, you basically get to have root canals which are even more unpleasant.

A third one, small immediate positive, (saving money) versus large positives (buying a boat or a car).  If you save money over time, you could get that huge, large positive thing.  Alternatively, the small immediate negative of meeting new people has more impact than the delayed large positive thing of falling in love.

And in general when we look at these particular types of behavior, the immediate consequence of some particular behavior has a significantly greater impact in the behavior than a delayed negative consequence, so immediate consequences have greater impact on behavior than delayed consequences.  Thus, working on small immediate positives or negatives is extremely, extremely important.

Now we’ve talked about a variety of variables that are related to punishment administration.  Let’s talk about some classic mistakes that people use when they’re administering punishing stimuli.  The first of these is just shown on slide 17, and there are many others. 

The first thing that we do often do (especially parents) is that we ignore behaviors that should be punished.  Ultimately, it puts the person on a random schedule.  So the result is the behavior goes up.

The second major mistake relates to not starting early enough.  Usually we wait until some kind of misbehavior continues or it becomes more severe.  Then do something about it.  Instead what one should do is use a punishing procedure is begin right away.  Somebody makes a response that deserves some kind of punishment, we immediately put them in a punishing situation.

Number three, the delay of the punishing stimulus.  That is, we wait until class is over before sending somebody to the principal’s office.  So, what does that do?  We don’t really know whether we’re going to be punished or not.

And finally the most important mistakes that we make when punishing stimuli is the last one. That is,  we don’t reinforce alternative good behaviors.  So when Joey is being bad in the classroom, Joey gets sent to the principal’s office.  But a lot of times Joey sits quietly in class and does a good job.  However,  we never reinforce him for doing that.  So, what we should do is if you’re going to use some kind of punishing technique, also reinforce the good behavior. When Joey or Susie is being good give them a goodie and punish them appropriately when they're being bad,.  What occurs is good behavior will begin to increase and the bad behavior will begin to go down.

Now there are also a wide variety of side effects to punishment and these are shown on, slide 18.  First, there is a general reduction in all behavior.  That is, when you punish somebody, they may basically withdraw, they don’t talk as much, they don’t interact as much with other kids, they don’t even interact as much with other parents.

A second side effect is that punishment may actually cause some kind of emotional outburst; yelling, acting out, hitting, striking, etc., fear responses, etc..  Finally, it may generate hostility toward the source of the person giving the punisher.  Often in therapeutic situations, we will have one individual who only gives the punishers while the therapist never does.  That way, the hostility is given towards that one individual who does that.

So each of these are extremely, extremely important.  Now another variable (as we see on slide 19) relates to two variables influencing side effects of  physical punishment.  First, physical punishment, is highly correlated with aggressive behavior in kids; and the more physical punishment usually that occurs, the more aggression that occurs on the kid.  So again, we talk about the fact related to the intensity and severity of a punishing stimulus.  One does not have to have an extremely intense punishing stimulus to get really strong response or depression when a parent is removing a kid’s favorite toys.  For my child, usually removing computer time is an extremely punishing stimulus for him because he loves to use the computer.  On the other hand, if I didn’t use something like that and smacked him around all the time, I might get the side effects that we showed in the previous slides.

So what’s the best behavior?  What is the best situation?  What is the best way to modify the behavior within the situation using reinforcement and punishment procedures.  This, in essence, is shown on slide 20.  The best procedure to use when trying to make a behavior change it this.  First always monitor the behavior.  That means writing it down.  How often did x behavior occur.  Then you implement some kind of an intervention.  The best way, of course, is to use some kind of reinforcement technique.  However, one can also do a second type of technique and also get very good behavior change as well, and that is what we talked about earlier.  That is, reinforcing good behavior and extinguishing or punishing bad behavior.  Using both of these or a combination of these two techniques can get major changes in the behavior.  The only way that you know you’re getting a behavior change is to monitor it and monitor it empirically, not subjectively (he seems to be doing better, I feel that he’s doing all right, etc.)  One should know Joey engaged and did five acting out behaviors in class today and after my intervention was implemented.

Joey now does one acting out behavior in class today and no more two months.  Because I’m using some reinforcement technique, Joey doesn’t act out in class any more.  So, all of these things  will have extremely important consequences on a behavior change.   

In the next section, we will begin talking about other aspects of punishment and some applications of punishment down the road.  So, have a fun day.