The Reinforcing Effects of Primary Reinforcers - Essay Example

During infancy, humans depend on the support of their parents for their needs. Anything that we see, hear touch, taste, and smell during reinforcement has the potential of becoming a new reinforcer.

Alcohol and tobacco is a reinforcer that is created through the association of peer approval, anxiety reduction, and other reinforcers. The differences in people cause humans to react differently to reinforcers. A primary reinforcer can be natural or created. Natural reinforcers occur through natural interaction with the environment. They occur as we smell, hear, see, touch, and taste. They require interaction with nature. Social and tangible reinforcers are secondary reinforcers that are purposely paired with certain behaviors to improve performance of some kind.

Social or tangible reinforcers are necessary when the natural reinforcers do not produce the behavior we need. A social reinforcer can be defined as any consequence, verbal, or symptom provided by one person to another that increases the frequency of the others person’s behavior. An example of a social reinforcer is a trophy. Tangible reinforcers should never be presented without some accompanying social reinforcer. Three examples of tangle reinforcers are food, gift certificates, and clothes.

When the behavior has been increased by reinforcement, failure to get reinforcement, over time, causes the behavior to return to its previously unreinforced level. This phenomenon is referred to as extinction. An example of extinction occurs when a person puts money in a vending machine and the machine does not dispense the item. If the person tries again eventually the person will learn that the machine will not dispense the desired item. Ignoring the behavior is an effective method of decreasing the behavior.

A frequent problem in many workplaces is that productive behavior is ignored. The managers spend their time-solving problems caused by their bad employees and forget to provide positive reinforcement to their good workers. Extinction occurs even if the managers do not plan for it. When new procedures are implanted the workers need to forget the old methods. No one is ready for change when they are getting adequate reinforcement for what they are already doing. A characteristic of extinction is that reinforcement is withdrawn from previously reinforced behavior; the behavior will often increase in frequency.

Three additional characteristics of extinction are emotional behavior, habit breakdown, and resurgence. Resurgence describes a phenomenon where behavior that has, undergone extinction will, after a period of not occurring, start again out of the blue. Extinction occurs when an employee's working environment is abruptly changed. Downsizing is an example of this phenomenon. Some behaviors take longer to extinguish than others. Extinction relates to the number of reinforced responses.