Simple psychology for daily life: Positive reinforcement
Positive reinforcement is a behaviour conditioning strategy. It involves rewarding desired behaviour with a stimulus or action to further encourage that behaviour.
Examples of positive reinforcement could be:
- Allowing a child to choose what they have for dinner after they spent the day helping clean the house.
- Giving a dog a treat when it reacts appropriately to a command, such as ‘sit’.
- Complimenting someone who’s done a good job on a task.
In each instance, the likelihood of the behaviour being repeated in the future increases as the actor correlates the action taken with the reward received.
Positive reinforcement is a powerful tool for promoting behaviour you desire in others.
Some examples of people who can benefit from using positive reinforcement include:
- Parents
- Pet owners
- Managers
- Teachers
- Coaches
In reality, positive reinforcement has a place in everyone’s daily life. Here are some easy ways to use positive reinforcement:
- Thanking and complimenting others when they do something that benefits you.
- Offering to hear out a subordinate’s thoughts and desires after they put in a good job on a project.
- Letting your child choose a weekend activity if they bring home a strong report card.
Positive reinforcement is common part of life, though not everyone is necessarily aware of it. Being conscious of positive reinforcement can help us not only get the best out of others, but understand when others are trying to build working relationships with us.
For more on conditioning, see this article I wrote on operant conditioning.
