Token Economy
Psychotherapy is the treatment of a mental disorder that takes place between a trained therapist and a patient. This type of therapy does not involve the use of drugs and it also divides into 4 main categories: psychological therapy, humanistic therapy, behavior therapy and cognitive therapy. Each of those four therapies are either known as a type of insight therapy or action therapy. Insight therapies understand the patients feelings, beliefs, motives and everything going on inside their head. Action therapy is a form of therapy that focuses on your actions, but not you’re reasonings behind them, and tries to find solutions to help minimize the occurrence of your behaviors.
Behavior therapy is a type of therapy that applies learning principles to either eliminate unwanted behaviors or increase wanted behaviors, therefore, making it a type of action therapy. Behavior therapy believes that all of your behaviors are learned and that the unpleasant ones can be changed. One of the many techniques used in behavior therapy is token economy. Token Economy is a system of exchange where you can either add or lose “tokens” based off certain behaviors you express. This technique is providing positive reinforcement and is used in many schools and even prisons. The goal is to increase the frequency of good behavior and in return getting a reward for good behavior being shown. The tokens can then be traded in for a prize or an item they want.
In 6th grade, my middle school had a reward system called “P.A.W.S (positive attitudes will succeed) stickers.” There were about 4 sheets of paper printed into our assignment books to place our earned P.A.W.S stickers and the whole school participated in it. P.A.W.S stickers would be handed out by teachers or helping aids throughout the school day. Kids would earn P.A.W.S stickers by completing their homework, cleaning up a mess in the classroom, using your manners when talking to your peers, having respect towards your teachers, etc. At the end of each quarter you would rip out a sheet with all the P.A.W.S stickers you collected from that quarter and hand it in to your teacher. The stickers could be traded in for bonus points, candy, a ticket to get put into a raffle to go to the community pool instead of school, a free pretzel on $1 pretzel day and so many more other options. How many stickers you got in that quarter determined how big the reward was. For example, for every 5 paw stickers your sheet had you could pick out 1 piece of candy, or if your sheet was full you could then enter the raffle for the pool day. 
P.A.W.S stickers is an example of a token economy. Teachers would reward positive behavior they liked in order for them to keep happening. P.A.W.S stickers helped encourage good behaviors from all the students because we knew the more we earned throughout the month, the bigger reward we would get. The school used this technique because in middle school kids are still learning whats right from wrong and with this reward system in place, I think it helped kids figure out the difference much quicker.
American Psychological Association, American Psychological Association, www.apa.org/topics/therapy/psychotherapy-approaches.
