Reward & punishment
in
Psychology & Islam
Introduction
A reward is a pleasurable event or experience that follows completing a task. It reinforces behaviour by increasing the likelihood of its occurrence. It's not just something labelled as a reward, but only if it actually increases the probability of a behaviour.
Photo by Aamir Nazir: https://www.pexels.com/photo/pilgrims-standing-by-kaaba-15369711/
Rewards are positive values assigned to objects, actions, or internal states. Primary rewards are essential for survival, like food or sex. Secondary rewards gain value from primary rewards. They can be created by pairing a neutral stimulus with a known reward. Rewards are more desirable than punishment in behaviour modification.
Punishment in psychology refers to consequences that reduce the likelihood of a behaviour recurring. It involves associating negative consequences with the behaviour to discourage its recurrence. Punishment can include applying aversive consequences or removing something desirable. It plays a role in operant conditioning, a learning method that uses rewards and punishments to modify behaviour.
According to Islam, rewards and punishments are solely determined by God. God's rewards for good actions are not a natural consequence but a result of His grace and benevolence. Similarly, punishments for evil deeds are not fixed and can be pardoned by God. God's decisions are based on His wisdom, rewarding acts done with pure intention to please Him and rejecting acts that lack genuine desire to please Him.
Allah (God) punishes sins committed with rebellious boldness and rewards genuine repentance. There is hope for all, no matter how great a criminal or disbeliever, as long as they recognize their errors, repent, and replace disobedience with obedience.
Reward and punishment is quite complicated topic in psychology and Islam. When we generally talk about these concepts; it provides various essences in both fields, either scientific or religious point of view. This article is based on basic concept of reward and punishment, reinforcement, concepts of practices in life, norms, critical evaluation of both concepts. Later, we will discuss Islamic point of view, along critical evaluation, how Prophet explained rewards and punishments or solutions in Islam, various sins and rewards form good deeds.
Critical analysis on rewards and punishment from scientific perspective:
REWARD:
A reward is a stimuli given to human or animal to satisfy their desire and to make them contented. Something that is given in the return of a good deed or paid something in return of a service.
Punishment:
It is the negative reward and action that is produced in the return of an action or behaviour and the consequences that produce discomfort and pain.
According to skinner the procedure in which responses are followed by the removal of positive action. Punishment teaches us not to repeat the particular behaviour twice and the response that cause harm.
A study was conducted called operant conditioning to examine the effects of reward and punishment.
Explanation:
In operant conditioning, we use several everyday words—positive, negative, reinforcement, and punishment—in a specialized manner. In operant conditioning, positive and negative do not mean good and bad. Instead, positive means you are adding something, and negative means you are taking something away. Reinforcement means you are increasing a behaviour, and punishment means you are decreasing a behaviour. Reinforcement can be positive or negative, and punishment can also be positive or negative. All reinforcers (positive or negative) increase the likelihood of a behavioural response. All punishers (positive or negative) decrease the likelihood of a behavioural response. Now let’s combine these four terms: positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, positive punishment, and negative punishment.
ImageReinforcement
The most effective way to teach a person or animal a new behaviour is with positive reinforcement. In positive reinforcement, a desirable stimulus is added to increase a behaviour.
For example, you tell your five-year-old son, Jerome, that if he cleans his room, he will get a toy. Jerome quickly cleans his room because he wants a new art set. Let’s pause for a moment. Some people might say, “Why should I reward my child for doing what is expected?” But in fact we are constantly and consistently rewarded in our lives. Our pay checks are rewards, as are high grades and acceptance into our preferred school. Being praised for doing a good job and for passing a driver’s test is also a reward.
Positive reinforcement as a learning tool is extremely effective. It has been found that one of the most effective ways to increase achievement in school districts with below-average reading scores was to pay the children to read. Specifically, second-grade students in Dallas were paid $2 each time they read a book and passed a short quiz about the book. The result was a significant increase in reading comprehension. What do you think about this program? If Skinner were alive today, he would probably think this was a great idea. He was a strong proponent of using operant conditioning principles to influence students’ behaviour at school. In fact, in addition to the Skinner box, he also invented what he called a teaching machine that was designed to reward small steps in learning an early forerunner of computer-assisted learning. His teaching machine tested students’ knowledge as they worked through various school subjects. If students answered questions correctly, they received immediate positive reinforcement and could continue; if they answered incorrectly, they did not receive any reinforcement. The idea was that students would spend additional time studying the material to increase their chance of being reinforced the next time.
In negative reinforcement, an undesirable stimulus is removed to increase a behaviour. For example, car manufacturers use the principles of negative reinforcement in their seatbelt systems, which go “beep, beep, beep” until you fasten your seatbelt. The annoying sound stops when you exhibit the desired behaviour, increasing the likelihood that you will buckle up in the future. Negative reinforcement is also used frequently in horse training. Riders apply pressure—by pulling the reins or squeezing their legs—and then remove the pressure when the horse performs the desired behaviour, such as turning or speeding up. The pressure is the negative stimulus that the horse wants to remove.
Punishment
Many people confuse negative reinforcement with punishment in operant conditioning, but they are two very different mechanisms. Remember that reinforcement, even when it is negative, always increases a behaviour. In contrast, punishment always decreases a behaviour. In positive punishment, you add an undesirable stimulus to decrease a behaviour.
An example of positive punishment is scolding a student to get the student to stop texting in class. In this case, a stimulus (the reprimand) is added in order to decrease the behaviour (texting in class).
In negative punishment, you remove a pleasant stimulus to decrease a behaviour. For example, when a child misbehaves, a parent can take away a favourite toy. In this case, a stimulus (the toy) is removed in order to decrease the behaviour.
Problems with using punishment
There are many problems with using punishment, such as:
Punished behaviour is not forgotten, it’s suppressed – behaviour returns when punishment is no longer present.
Causes increased aggression – shows that aggression is a way to cope with problems.
Creates fear that can generalize to undesirable behaviours, e.g., fear of school.
Does not necessarily guide toward desired behaviour – reinforcement tells you what to do, punishment only tells you what not to do.
Primary and Secondary Reinforcers
Rewards such as stickers, praise, money, toys, and more can be used to reinforce learning. Let’s go back to Skinner’s rats again. How did the rats learn to press the lever in the Skinner box? They were rewarded with food each time they pressed the lever. For animals, food would be an obvious reinforcer. Primary reinforcers are reinforcers that have innate reinforcing qualities. These kinds of reinforcers are not learned. Water, food, sleep, shelter, sex, and touch, among others, are primary reinforcers. Pleasure is also a primary reinforcer. Organisms do not lose their drive for these things. For most people, jumping in a cool lake on a very hot day would be reinforcing and the cool lake would be innately reinforcing—the water would cool the person off (a physical need), as well as provide pleasure.
A secondary reinforcer has no inherent value and only has reinforcing qualities when linked with a primary reinforcer. Praise, linked to affection, is one example of a secondary reinforcer, as when you called out “Great shot!” every time Joaquin made a goal. Another example, money, is only worth something when you can use it to buy other things—either things that satisfy basic needs (food, water, shelter—all primary reinforcers) or other secondary reinforcers. If you were on a remote island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and you had stacks of money, the money would not be useful if you could not spend it. What about the stickers on the behavior chart? They also are secondary reinforcers.
A study was designed to examine the effect of reward and punishment on academic performance in some selected secondary schools in Benin City. This study was motivated to find out whether the parents and teachers support the use of reward and punishment in secondary school system. The investigation was therefore guided by the following:
1. Whether reward and punishment would have effect on educational system in Benin City.
2. Whether reward and punishment are instrument of discipline to followed the questionnaire were administered based on the three criteria above. The results were analysed, the following emerged as research findings.
i. Reward and punishment plays a big and important role in teaching and learning process and should be practiced in schools.
ii. Parents and teachers support the use of reward and punishment in school systems.
iii. Reward and punishment is weapon of descriptive and that they have important role to perform in school administration and academic performance of the learner or students.
Emotions are central to everyday life, as they bring flavour to day-to-day experiences. These flavours guide individuals to determine their subsequent actions. Imagine, for example, to experience moments of joy and excitement while being in the company of friends. Without conscious processing, the co-occurrence of this context (i.e., friends) and its positive internal ‘seasoning’ (i.e., feeling joyful and excited) teaches you that spending more time with friends is potentially rewarding. As a result, the probability that one will seek out the company of friends again in the future increases.
The idea that affective experiences motivate actions through implicit associative learning originates from operant conditioning theory. According to Pavlovian or classical conditioning, individuals implicitly (i.e., without conscious processing) learn about the associations between contextual cues and internal cues such as the concurrent levels of affect. The rewarding or punishing value of each association, in turn, affects the probability of re-engagement in that activity. Although the emotional seasoning of daily life provides an important bias for subsequent motivated action, these implicit learning processes are usually studied in a controlled laboratory setting and not in daily life.
In laboratory settings, implicit learning processes are assessed by experimental tasks, such as the probabilistic reward task; the probabilistic selection task; and the probabilistic reversal learning task. Instead of associations between contextual cues and positive or negative emotions, associations between stimuli and monetary gains or losses are created and manipulated to induce implicit preferences for certain stimuli. For example, when stimulus A is subliminally rewarded with more money than stimulus B (i.e., without conscious processing), individuals are found to develop a preference for A over B. Although the laboratory setting for these experiments allows for precise control, the stimuli and the monetary gains and losses are a pale shadow of rewarding or punishing experiences in daily life. Most importantly, it remains unknown how the response biases found in laboratory tasks translate to motivated actions in real-life.
Rewards and punishment in moral norms
Human social interactions are regulated by moral norms that define individual obligations and rights. These norms are enforced by punishment of transgressors and reward of followers. Yet, the generality and strength of this drive to punish or reward is unclear, especially when people are not personally involved in the situation and when the actual impact of their sanction is only indirect, i.e., when it diminishes or promotes the social status of the punished or rewarded individual. In a real-life study, we investigated if people are inclined to anonymously punish or reward a person for her past deeds in a different social context.
Participants from three socio-professional categories voted anonymously for early career violinists in an important violin competition. We found that participants did not punish an immoral violin candidate, nor did they reward another hyper-moral candidate. On the contrary, one socio-professional category sanctioned hyper-morality. Hence, salient moral information about past behaviour did not elicit punishment or reward in an impersonal situation where the impact of the sanction was indirect. We conclude that contextual features play an important role in human motivation to enforce moral norms.
Token Economy
Token economy is a system in which targeted behaviours are reinforced with tokens (secondary reinforcers) and later exchanged for rewards (primary reinforcers).
Tokens can be in the form of fake money, buttons, poker chips, stickers, etc. While the rewards can range anywhere from snacks to privileges or activities. For example, teachers use token economy at primary school by giving young children stickers to reward good behaviour.
Token economy has been found to be very effective in managing psychiatric patients. However, the patients can become over reliant on the tokens, making it difficult for them to adjust to society once they leave prison, hospital, etc.
Staff implementing a token economy programme have a lot of power. It is important that staff do not favour or ignore certain individuals if the programme is to work. Therefore, staff need to be trained to give tokens fairly and consistently even when there are shift changes such as in prisons or in a psychiatric hospital.
Critical Evaluation
Operant conditioning can be used to explain a wide variety of behaviours, from the process of learning, to addiction and language acquisition. It also has practical application (such as token economy) which can be applied in classrooms, prisons and psychiatric hospitals.
However, operant conditioning fails to take into account the role of inherited and cognitive factors in learning, and thus is an incomplete explanation of the learning process in humans and animals.
For example, Kohler found that primates often seem to solve problems in a flash of insight rather than be trial and error learning. Also, social learning theory suggests that humans can learn automatically through observation rather than through personal experience.
The use of animal research in operant conditioning studies also raises the issue of extrapolation. Some psychologist argue we cannot generalize from studies on animals to humans as their anatomy and physiology is different from humans, and they cannot think about their experiences and invoke reason, patience, memory or self-comfort.
Operant conditioning, also known as instrumental conditioning, is a method of learning normally attributed to B.F. Skinner, where the consequences of a response determine the probability of it being repeated. Through operant conditioning behaviour which is reinforced (rewarded) will likely be repeated, and behaviour which is punished will occur less frequently.
A Skinner box, also known as an operant conditioning chamber, is a device used to objectively record an animal's behaviour in a compressed time frame. An animal can be rewarded or punished for engaging in certain behaviours, such as lever pressing (for rats) or key pecking (for pigeons).
Conclusion
We can all think of examples of how our own behaviour has been affected by reinforcers and punishers. As a child you probably tried out a number of behaviours and learned from their consequences.
For example, if when you were younger you tried smoking at school, and the chief consequence was that you got in with the crowd you always wanted to hang out with, you would have been positively reinforced (i.e., rewarded) and would be likely to repeat the behaviour.
If, however, the main consequence was that you were caught, caned, suspended from school and your parents became involved you would most certainly have been punished, and you would consequently be much less likely to smoke now.
Islamic comparative analysis of reward and punishment
Sunnah of Prophet PBUH is one of the main source of Islamic law and Quran has covered all of his activities. He taught us which deeds are acceptable in front of Allah to get reward and which can lead to punishment. Accordingly, psychologists discovered about positive and negative reinforcement and reward or punishment has been discussed in Islam on the very initial stage when Prophet PBUH talked about the knowledge.
“If any, one pursues a path in search of knowledge Allah will thereby make easy for him path to paradise the angles spread their wings from good pleasure and pursuit who seek knowledge and all inhabitants of the heaven and the earth, even fish in the depth of water, ask forgiveness for him.”
As once Prophet PBUH once said, “when a man dies his acts come to end, with three exceptions: sadqqah-e-jariah. Knowledge from which benefits continues to be reaped and the prayers of a good son of him. He also warned about punishments for those who refuse to be tempted into the educative process even by these rewards; the Prophet seems to have indicated punishment, which would be inevitably, come because of not teaching and not learning.
Under the concept of Islam good moral behaviour is only key of successful Islamic life. Even it started from test from Allah to check fight against devil.
“Believers are they who fear God and fear nothing else.”
When things become difficult motivation of reward and punishment helps. Even many people operate on this. Our creator understands nature of human, so he gave idea for followers of his noble Messenger during Israk & Mikraj during guided tour of hell and Paradise. Man is free to perform actions he has to decide either to do pious or impious actions. Islamic ideology provides a motivating force to inspire individuals. Dimensions in Islam are numerous, far-reaching and comprehensive. It explains between man and God, with Prophets, with others and inner self of humans. The concept of reward and punishment towards Muslim play its role to guard his external behaviour his manifest deeds. Reward means encouragement while punishment as a means of discipline. Only, God has authority. Even nobody can authorize any reward and punishment towards their slaves without permission of Allah for each act. These are subject of freedom. Any evil done under compulsion is not punishable. ‘Allah does not encumber anyone beyond his capacities and He is never failing in appreciating even the slightest good deed done by a person.’
There are two elements of reward and punishment. First, it inspires the believer to move forward through encouragement and pushes him back through threats. As, it’s difficult to encourage anyone for anything by examining their actions. Self-interest of people lead them towards good deeds for inner satisfaction. Quran elucidated in dealing with heaven and hell by elaborating demanding and unacceptable actions. This is the natural way in which human can inclined in matters of Kufar and Iman for making right or wrong choices. The concept in imagination of humans is misleading for sinners as they won’t get any chance to improve themselves. When the death approaches on God command, separates his soul from body. The soul will be returned on the day of judgment for purpose of reward and punishment. Quran and Sunnah explained sinful actions or righteous actions are under the grace and benevolence of Allah. He has authority to punish and reward, person.
Sometimes the concept of reward is stated as positive commitments or negative reinforcement which improve behaviour by removing negative consequences.
“Indeed, those who have said: our Lord is Allah, and then remained on right course – there will be no fear concerning them, nor will they grieve.”
All those people who are obedient to Allah they obey commands of Lord and keep themselves grateful always. They present as faithful servants. On the other hand, ingratitude has a lot of disguise which leads toward the rejection of God’s authority and rebellious against his law.
“As a grace from Us. Thus so We reward those who give thanks.” “And remember! Your Lord caused it to be declared that if you are grateful, I will add more favors unto you, but if you show ingratitude, truly My punishment is terrible indeed.”
Quran describes the punishment for the disbelievers. These are the people who will be disgraced and denied the joy and honour of seeing the Face of Allah, which will be the greatest loss. For this whole procedure Allah has arranged a system of recording, akin to a behaviour management system, in which an ongoing account is maintained {And, indeed, over you are keepers, noble and recording; they know whatever you so.}
Here are few points accord to comparative analysis of Islam about punishment which can lead to hell fire.
⦁ The punishment of theft “al-Sariqa”. “As fro thieves, both male and female, cut off their hands. It is reward of their own deeds, and exemplary punishment from Allah…”
There are few other forms of stolen product punishments; stolen property, problem of custody, armed robbery. Death, crucifixion, cutting opposite hands and feet, and Banishment (al-Nafy) for theft.
⦁ Illicit Sexual relationship without marriage “Zinnah”. In which men and women and homosexuality is included. Stoning as punishment “al-Rajm”. “the fornicatress and fornicator scourge you each one of them a hundred stripes. And, let not pity for them withhold you from enforcing the sentence of Allah, if you believe in Allah and last day. And let a party of believers witness their punishment.”
⦁ Our Islam highlights the point of maintaining bonds of kinship. Who severe the bond of kinship can impact badly. It prevents a person from paradise and will lead to hell-fire. “And those who break the covenant of Allah, after its ratification and sever that which Allah has commanded to be join and work mischief in the land, on them is the curse and for them is unhappy home.”
⦁ Consumption of alcohol is forbidden in Islam even in small amount of intoxicant. “Allah has cursed alcohol, the one who drinks it, the one who puts it, the one who squeezes it, the for whom is squeezed, the one who carries it and the one to whom it is carried.” Flogging is a way to punish those who consumed alcohol. There are various numbers of lashes.
For all those Allah said, “indeed those who disbelieved in our verses –we will drive them into the fire. Every time their skins are roasted through, we will replace them with other skins so they may taste the punishment. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted in might and wise.
⦁ Punishment for murderer; who kill someone in aggression or for any kind of hate will charge death of person (retaliation). Murder held mistakenly, leads toward blood-money (diya).
“Our Lord, indeed whoever You admit to the fire— you have disgraced him, and for the wrongdoers there are no helpers.”
Last but not least, myself Memoona would like to add my overall thoughts on reward and punishment. Islam give us lesson to create a sound mind, try to get knowledge which can teach righteous path and fear of Allah to prohibit the wrong actions from relief of punishment. We are struggling in world for seeing Allah on the day of hereafter and it should be our primary goal of thinking and motivation. As, for believer facial view of Allah will be biggest reward in paradise, on other side evil’s follower won’t able to see Him. These concepts are just for quit of undesired actions in order to get on hereafter by Our Lord.
Overall, these concepts clear meaning of reward and punishment. As, psychology deals with providing something for good deeds and exclude necessary things as punish. However, Islam focus on this concept for maintaining faith and virtue. Psychology explains concept of delayed gratification where they delay reward for better achievement. On the other hand, in Islam Allah has promised for rewards at the day of hereafter. In, Islam reward and punishment practice by motivating people for positive behaviours which include promise of Jannah and punishment build moral and ethical framework to discourage sins and bad actions i.e cutting off hands of thief.
I think psychology and Islam perform same actions to deal with people under reward and punishment. Previously, we read concept of token economy in which something has been given to achieve positive results in someone’s behaviour. Islam emphasizes forgiveness and mercy by teaching lessons from stories of Prophet and people before them. This system is based on both intentions and actions_ in good or bad side. Generally, positive and negative reinforcement re-shape behaviours to get rewards and punishment, as in Islam it encourage obedience and discourage wrongdoing.
