Psychology of Learning

Module 07: Operant Conditioning 2

Part 3: Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Consequences

Looking Back

In Parts 1 and 2, we explored sophisticated theories of reinforcement and behavioral choice. The Premack Principle and response deprivation theory revealed that activities can reinforce other activities based on preference hierarchies and deprivation levels. Behavioral economics showed that organisms optimize choices to maximize utility. We examined forward and backward chaining for teaching complex behavioral sequences, discovered instinctive drift, and explored avoidance learning through Mowrer’s two-factor theory. Now we examine what makes consequences effective or ineffective.

Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Consequences

Reinforcement and punishment are only as powerful as their importance to an animal or human. Animals and humans can be conditioned to discriminate between stimuli that are only slightly different. There is evidence that we are also sensitive to various properties of the consequences we experience following a behavior.

Satiation: When Reinforcers Lose Their Power

Satiation is the idea that the effectiveness of a reinforcer will be reduced if the animal or individual’s appetite for the reinforcer has been met. This isn’t just getting full—the law of diminishing marginal value from economics is also applicable (Skinner, 1938).

Consider a time when you noticed that a reinforcer was less effective than normal. Was the decrease in effectiveness due to satiation? As long as the example was based on a primary reinforcer (meeting a biological need), satiation was probably involved.

Food reinforcement works best with hungry animals. After a rat has eaten several food pellets, additional pellets become less reinforcing. The first pellet might elicit rapid lever pressing; the tenth produces sluggish responding. This has practical implications: animal training sessions should occur when animals are moderately hungry, not satiated. Similarly, token economies in classrooms work best when tokens can be exchanged for items students actually desire, not items they already have in abundance.

Immediacy: Timing Matters

Immediacy is the idea that consequences that follow a target behavior immediately are more effective. Delayed consequences have weakened effects on behavior (Skinner, 1938).

If I promise to give you $100, you would be thrilled. If I then told you that you would not receive the $100 for 5 years, you’d be a lot less thrilled. We discount delayed consequences—a phenomenon we’ll discuss in much more detail in Module 12 (Understanding Human Decision Making).

Consider the criminal justice system in the United States. Individuals accused of crimes often wait weeks or months for trials. If convicted, sizable time passes between the crime and punishment onset. Without delving too deeply into obvious benefits associated with time for defendants to prepare appropriate defenses, is the delay between crime and associated punishment good practice? Consider this question solely from the perspective of operant conditioning.

From a conditioning perspective, the delay severely weakens punishment effectiveness. The longer the delay, the weaker the association between behavior and consequence. Immediate consequences produce strongest learning. This is why animal training requires split-second timing—clickers provide immediate feedback, bridging the gap between behavior and primary reinforcement.

Contingency: Reliability of Consequences

Contingency is the idea that effective consequences must reliably follow a target behavior each time the behavior is demonstrated. Inconsistent consequences produce weaker behavior change (Skinner, 1938).

Have you ever done something wrong and not gotten caught? If so, did you repeat the behavior in the future because you figured you would not suffer any negative consequences? Then, did you eventually, to great surprise, experience some negative consequences? Were you frustrated because you did not realize that negative consequences might occur in relation to the behavior?

In the past, you only get a speeding ticket if a police officer is present. Now, with red light cameras, the contingency between running red lights and tickets is much stronger. Every violation is recorded and punished. This increased contingency produces more effective behavior change than occasional police enforcement. We’ll discuss the effects of uncertainty of reinforcements and punishments on behavior in Module 12.

Cost-Benefit Analysis: Is It Worth It?

Cost-benefit is the idea that effective consequences present benefits to the individual or learner that outweigh the costs of demonstrating the target behavior. Organisms perform behaviors only if costs incurred are smaller than reinforcement received (Skinner, 1938).

Have you ever thought to yourself that you really should change a specific behavior, but it just isn’t worth it to you? What was the behavior? What were the potential benefits of changing the behavior? What costs (time, effort, etc.) were associated with changing behavior?

Students often face cost-benefit decisions about studying. Studying requires time and effort (costs). Good grades provide reinforcement (benefits). If benefits outweigh costs—scholarship opportunities, parental approval, career advancement—students study. If costs outweigh benefits—course seems irrelevant, grades don’t matter for goals, social opportunities compete for time—studying decreases. Effective behavior change requires ensuring benefits clearly outweigh costs. We’ll discuss this in more detail in Module 12.

Additional Factors Affecting Performance on Operant Tasks

• Reinforcer Quality: Desirability of the reinforcer matters. Animals respond fastest for high-quality reinforcers. Premium foods produce higher response rates than bland foods.
• Rate of Reinforcement: More frequent reinforcement produces faster responding than infrequent reinforcement (beyond schedule effects).
• Delay of Reinforcement: The amount of time between a response and its consequences. Delayed reinforcement doesn’t influence behavior nearly as much as immediate reinforcement.
• Response Effort: Difficulty of the required response. Animals prefer less effortful responses. If two responses produce equal reinforcement, organisms choose the easier response.
• Amount of Reinforcement: Quantity of the reinforcer. Stronger responding occurs for more reinforcement. Larger food portions produce higher response rates than smaller portions.
• Level of Motivation: No responding with no motivation. Satiated animals show minimal responding regardless of reinforcement schedule.

Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Punishment

Manner of Introduction: For maximum behavioral change, punishment should be introduced at its full intensity. Mild punishers create habituation and this habituation extends to more severe punishers as well. Starting with mild punishment then escalating allows organisms to adapt, reducing punishment’s effectiveness. This is why the “boiling frog” analogy applies—put a live lobster in a pot of cold water, then heat it, and the lobster will die without struggling. Gradual increases allow adaptation.

Immediacy of Punishment: A punisher delivered immediately following a behavior is most successful in eliminating the behavior. Long delays make it hard to know what association should be formed. Delayed punishment may not be attributed to the target behavior, reducing effectiveness.

Schedule of Punishment: Continuous punishment is more effective than partial punishment schedules. If a behavior is punished only occasionally, organisms learn that they can “get away with it” sometimes. Inconsistent punishment produces weaker behavior suppression.

Motivation to Respond: Punishment does little to change key pecking behavior of very hungry pigeons. Strong motivation overrides mild punishment. To increase punishment effectiveness, find the reinforcer driving the behavior and reduce its value. Punishing an extremely motivated organism requires either intense punishment or reducing motivation.

Availability of Alternative Behaviors: Behavior is changed much more by a punisher if an alternative means of achieving the reinforcer is available. Punishment without alternatives creates frustration; punishment with alternatives facilitates behavior change.

Punishment as a Discriminative Stimulus: Shock can be used as a discriminative stimulus to tell a pigeon when key pecks will lead to food. It might be argued that certain self-injurious behaviors lead to pain which might be a discriminative stimulus telling the person that reinforcement (sympathy) is imminent. Punishment can acquire multiple functions beyond simple response suppression.

Disadvantages of Using Punishment

Punishment can elicit several emotional effects (fear and anger); these emotions can hamper learning. If the goal of a punisher is to decrease mistakes and increase correct answers, fear and anger will disrupt the correct answer part by decreasing answering behavior. Students criticized for wrong answers may stop attempting answers entirely.

Punishment can lead to general suppression of all behaviors. If a teacher criticizes a student for asking a stupid question (in order to reduce dumb questions), the student may stop asking any questions. Also, other children in class will lower all question-asking behaviors. Punishment creates collateral suppression extending beyond the target behavior.

The use of punishment demands continual monitoring of an individual’s behavior. With reinforcement, the subject monitors itself (my son is quick to tell me when he did well on a test [to receive praise as a reinforcer], but I discover bad grades stuck deep in his book bag [he wants to avoid the punisher, disapproval]). Punishment requires external monitoring; reinforcement recruits self-monitoring.

Punishment can sometimes lead to aggression against either the punisher or whomever happens to be around. Prisons are a definite example. Rats may live peacefully together, but once shocks begin to be administered, they will begin fighting. Punishment creates aversive emotional states that can trigger aggressive responses.

Skinner pointed out that punishment often acts as a (negative) reinforcer to the one doing the punishing. Prisons serve as punishment to reduce future criminal behavior by criminals, but prison sentences also serve as reinforcement for “victims” to make them feel better. This creates conflicts of interest—punishment may be maintained more by its reinforcing effects on punishers than by its effectiveness in changing behavior.

Despite these disadvantages, punishment can lead to levels of behavioral change equal to the effects of reinforcement. When applied immediately, consistently, at appropriate intensity, with alternatives available, punishment effectively modifies behavior. The question becomes whether benefits outweigh costs and ethical concerns.

Applications to Behavior Therapy

The principles we’ve explored—factors influencing consequence effectiveness and punishment parameters—form the foundation for behavior therapy techniques. Behavior therapists apply operant conditioning principles to reduce or eliminate unwanted behaviors using various behavioral decelerators: techniques designed to slow, reduce, or eliminate problematic behaviors. These include positive punishment (adding aversive consequences), negative punishment (removing pleasant consequences), extinction (removing reinforcement), and other sophisticated approaches.

However, the specific therapeutic techniques for applying these principles—including response cost, time-out, overcorrection, systematic desensitization, and others—will be covered comprehensively in Module 13 on behavioral therapy. There we’ll examine how therapists ethically and effectively apply operant conditioning principles to treat clinical problems, the controversies surrounding aversive techniques, and the evidence base for various interventions. For now, understanding the basic principles of consequence effectiveness and punishment prepares us for those applied discussions.

When conducting a functional analysis of behavior, clinicians identify what maintains problematic behaviors. Automatic reinforcement occurs when the behavior itself produces sensory stimulation that reinforces it—the behavior is its own reward. For example, a child may engage in repetitive hand-flapping because the movement feels pleasant, not because it produces social attention or tangible rewards. Understanding automatic reinforcement is crucial because behaviors maintained this way require different intervention strategies than behaviors maintained by social or tangible reinforcers.

Looking Forward

We’ve examined factors influencing consequence effectiveness: satiation reduces reinforcer power, immediacy strengthens associations, contingency ensures reliability, and cost-benefit analysis determines whether behaviors are worth performing. We explored punishment factors—manner of introduction, immediacy, schedule, motivation, availability of alternatives, and discriminative functions. We discussed punishment disadvantages: emotional effects hampering learning, general behavioral suppression, monitoring demands, aggression induction, and reinforcement of the punisher. This completes our systematic exploration of operant conditioning principles, providing foundations for applied behavior analysis and the therapeutic techniques we’ll explore in Module 13.