Description
Examples of Reinforcement in Daily Lives
ASSIGNMENT:
Please read the instructor notes and the two handouts completely (attached). Sometimes the material can be technical. Let’s try to apply some of the information learned to our everyday lives and the lives of our clients. From what you learned so far, list some everyday examples of how REINFORCEMENT is used in the following 3 environments:
1. Home
2. School
3. Work
Be sure to list examples in all 3 areas! (minimum of 150 words)
Please also respond to the following two students regarding the same topic (100 word minimum EACH)
Student one: 1. Home: When a child completes task at home they are rewarded with money, treats, or toys. This is a positive reinforcement. I use this in my house with my son. When he is good in school the whole week, I reward him with V bucks to purchase things on his PlayStation 5. When he is not good, I take his game away and put him on punishment also as a reinforcement for his bad behavior.
2. School: Reinforcement in school also happens. When I was younger if our behavior was on green for the whole week at the end of the week will be able to pick from the treasure chest. There were many nice toys in our teachers treasure chest so that made everyone want to have good behavior to pick from it. Another reinforcement for bad behavior would be referrals, in school suspension and even sometimes being expelled.
3. Work: Positive reinforcement at work is used when someone is awarded employee of the month or when given a raise for excelling in your position. Many people have goals to be promoted so that makes them go above and beyond to prove to the boss that they are the top pick for the job. A not so good reinforcement happens when you are not doing what needs to be done at the job and you get suspended and in worse cases fired.
Student two: Home
When I first got my puppy Luna, she was not yet house trained. We tried different ways of going about it, but I ended up doing something very much in line with Pavlov’s experiment. I strung a few bells on a long string and looped that around the door knob leading outside. Every time we would take her out I would take her paw and hit it on our way out. She got the hang of it a lot quicker than I expected, and within 2 weeks she was completely trained and hitting the bell herself when she needed to go. The positive reinforcement for her was getting to go outside, as well as loud and over-excited praise from myself. Another example of positive reinforcement in the home was when I set up a chart for my 4 and 6 year old stepkids for completing their chores unasked. At the end of each week they got to choose a treat from the store. I also got a whole bunch of stickers so at the end of each day they got to pick out which one they wanted to use. It honestly made me remember how cool things like choosing your own sticker used to be.
School
I am sure that I’m not just speaking for myself when I say that I recall both positive and negative reinforcement when looking back at my time in school. When I was thinking about this example, I thought of a kid I grew up with. He would act out, the teacher would yell at him in front of the class after repeated attempts to ignore him, he would make some sort of smart comment back, which would get the kids laughing. Not only did the teacher use negative reinforcement, thus lessening the chance of getting her desired result, but it backfired because he received the positive reinforcement of the other kids laughing at his behavior with him. I think a better way of handling him would have been to excuse him and herself from class and talk privately so he wouldn’t get that further backup from the other kids as encouragement.
Work
Right now, and for the last few years I have been serving for work, and in order to get any group of servers to do what you want as a manager, you have to bribe us. Yelling really doesn’t have quite an impact in the serving world. If a menu item needs to be sold before it goes bad, a manager may run a contest to reward the server who sells the most of that dish for the night, whether through free food, no sidework, a night off, etc. They know just telling us to try and sell that item, especially if it is a lower cost, we won’t do it, or even just forget to do it. I also recall at one of my serving jobs where you had to sell a certain amount of retail per month, and if you didn’t, you would lose shifts. The incentive is that one wouldn’t want to lose money, so while we did it, I would not necessarily say that was positive reinforcement.