Punishers and Incentives

Another way that we learn what to do or not to do is through punishers and reinforcers. Reinforcers show us what we should do by positively reinforcing us while punishers have the opposite effect to make sure that negative things are less likely to occur. For example, going to class and studying are reinforcers and not studying and failing are punishers.

Incentives are external stimuli that motivate the behavior to occur. A positive incentive would be something like getting good grades after studying while failing a class motivates the student to stop skipping classes.