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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
This 8 page paper asks the question and answers it in the affirmative. A psychological perspective is utilized. Several aspects of punishment are explored and punishment is viewed in terms of family life, education and criminal justice. Bibliography lists 11 sources.
Page Count:
8 pages (~225 words per page)
File: RT13_SA214pun.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
ask what exactly punishment is, and whether it really works. In psychology, the definition of punishment is "any aversive stimulus administered to an organism as part of training" ("Definition" 2002).
Indeed, it is something imposed on a subject and it is a negative reinforcer. The extent of effectiveness really varies with situations. Punishment is used in school when teachers want
students to perform well and the consequences of not doing work--failing a class, being reprimanded in front of the class, being embarrassed, having to go to parent-teacher meetings--at least theoretically
should act to prompt the student to perform well. Similarly, in the home, punishment acts to reinforce the rules. If Mary stays out too late, she is "grounded," a punishment
that serves to reinforce the good behavior. Next time, she will be more careful about going home late. If there were no punishment, she would not have an incentive to
return to home on time. In criminal justice, punishment is an obvious necessity. It is only through punishment that potential prisoners have the desire to perform good deeds, instead of
doing bad things that will get them into trouble. There is a great deal of support for this idea that punishment works. Yerkes demonstrated the principal in a
simple T-shaped maze, as in one of the places, the experimenter placed a strip of sandpaper to serve as warning, for the electric grill that was just beyond it (Young,
1936). Eventually, worms would start to develop an avoiding habit, but it did vary with the physical state of the worm (1936). A shock had then been used with rats,
mice, cats, dogs, and chicks, in addition to other laboratory animals, and in human research, electrical punishment has also been effectively employed (1936). A group of forty humans
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