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Consequences That Decrease Behavior: Punishers and Penalties
by
Charles Lamson
Punishers and penalties are everyday occurrences for everyone. We recoil in pain when we touch a surface that is very hot or very cold. We cut our fingers or hit them with a hammer when repairing things. We fall, pinch our fingers, and bump our heads. We lose money in vending machines. We are fined for speeding and charged late fees for not paying a bill on time. Because punishment is so pervasive in everyday life, it is difficult to imagine a world without it. However, we do not like to think of punishment as a necessary component of the workplace.
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Unfortunately, behaviors that are illegal, immoral, unethical, unhealthy, unsafe, and unfair do occur in the workplace. These behaviors can have devastating effects on an organization and must be stopped. Therefore, we change punishers and penalties as the most expedient consequences for quickly stopping behaviors in the workplace that are dangerous and/or demoralizing.
Punishers
A punisher (P+) is defined as any consequence that follows a behavior that causes a reduction in the frequency of that behavior. This definition is similar to that of positive reinforcement. A positive reinforcer is any consequence that follows a behavior that results in an increase in the frequency of the behavior. Both consequences require an active response from the environment. With positive reinforcers the person receives something that he/she values. With punishers the person receives something that he/she does not like. That means in this context that punishers, as reinforcers are defined not by what the consequence is, but by what the consequence does to the behavior. One could not say that spanking a child or chewing out a performer is a punisher. They would be punishers only if they reduced the occurrence of the behaviors. We cannot make a list of punishers. We can only make a list of things that are potential punishers. Punishers at work can be as mild as being told no or as intense as being fired.
It is important to note that punishment never solves a business problem. Punishment merely stops behavior temporarily. No organization accomplishes its mission by stopping people from doing things. Any police force that sees its mission as stopping crime will never run out of criminals to catch. It has often been said that prisons are graduate schools for criminals, where they learn how to break the law and not get caught. Having stopped a criminal act, something must be done to increase the probability that lawful behavior will take its place. Only one consequence can do that - positive reinforcement. Unfortunately, our criminal justice system is slow to learn this lesson.
The advantage punishment offers is that when the behavior that we do not want has stopped, we have an opportunity to replace it with more appropriate productive behavior - a job for R+ (positive reinforcement). Think about that carefully. If you punish one behavior, consider what you want instead. Use that moment, or another time closely associated with the punished behavior, to introduce either the directions for behavior you want or the opportunity to reinforce what you see that you like. Stop behavior you do not want, while setting up conditions for other behavior. If every time you punish, you provide opportunity for potential, you will become a generalized reinforcer in spite of the fact that you occasionally punish or correct undesirable performance.
Penalties
The difference between a penalty (P-) and a punisher (P+), is that with a penalty, engaging in a behavior causes the performer to lose something of value. We generally think of penalties as fines or losses of privileges, but these would be penalties only if they reduced the behavior. A $1,000 fine for some outrageous behavior committed by a professional athlete who makes $10 million a year probably has little if any effect on his behavior; but, for a person making $30,000 a year, such a fine may have a tremendous effect. An executive discovered the only consequence for express lane driving was a $100 fine with no points toward losing his driver license and said, "Then I'll pay $100 a month to drive in the express lane." He figured that the odds of getting caught and fined were about 1 to 30. To him, losing the money was not a penalty; it was the cost of a permit.
Cost cutting in companies almost always involves penalties for performers. Most financial experts do not understand the negative effect that this has on performance. At a time when discretionary performance is needed, management action creates the opposite effect. A better action would be to set new contingencies for earning benefits. The contingency might be to earn the benefit by finding ways to cut expenses in amounts greater than the cost of the benefit. Under this condition, people can get increased benefits even during tough economic times.
Because penalties usually have a very low response cost for the one imposing the penalty, they are used frequently. This can be dangerous because when performers get to the point that they have nothing more to lose, the consequence becomes ineffective.
In a large number of families, penalty is the most frequent consequence used by parents. Misbehavior results in loss of TV, family car use, telephone, and freedom to go places and visit friends. In this regard, the weekly allowance is more often than not a penalty system. The child is given money at the beginning of the week and misbehavior results in losing money. It is no wonder that children raised under these conditions often drop out of normal society and look down their noses at material culture. Their experience is that if you want something, people use it to control you. If you have something, someone can take it away from you. If you do not want to have anything of value, you are free from control, particularly from authority figures.
While punishment and penalty are necessary on occasion, frequent use of either almost always indicates a lack of understanding behavior and how to manage it effectively. In an effectively managed organization, the use of punishers and penalties should almost never be necessary. Someone's understanding of how to maximize human potential can be readily gauged by observing their use of these consequences. We also know that organizations pay a high cost for allowing punitive management behavior. Punishers and penalties suppress not only the punished behavior, but can also have the correlated effect of creating employees who are overtly cautious and who have high levels of distrust, fear, and anger. Nevertheless, many people use punitive methods more easily than positive ones in organizations and in life in general. Why is this so? The answer is in the next post, entitled, Why Are Punishment and Penalty So Popular?
*SOURCE: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: CHANGING BEHAVIOR THAT DRIVES ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS, 4TH ED., 2004, AUBREY C. DANIELS & JAMES E. DANIELS, PGS. 89-91*
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