Operant Conditioning is a way in which someone learns something by rewards or consequences. Basically if someone gets a positive consequence from an action, then they will likely do it again, whereas if they receive a negative consequence, they are unlikely to do that action again. People tend to repeat behaviors that obtain positive effects and make you feel good about yourself. For example if someone sings on stage and receives a lot of applause afterwards, that person is more likely to sing again or gain more confidence than if they did not get a lot of applause or got booed. Operant Conditioning uses shaping to positively or negatively reinforce certain behaviors to strengthen them in some way. Positive reinforcers increase behaviors by adding something that someone likes such as getting a hug after they do something good. A negative reinforcer increases behavior by removing something that someone does not like. For example if you don’t complete your homework you will get a bad grade but you do the homework to avoid receiving that grade. On the other hand a punishment decreases as behavior instead of a reinforcer which increases it. A positive punishment adds an aversive stimulus while a negative punishment removes a desired stimulus, both to decrease a behavior.
My parents used operant conditioning on my sister and I when we were younger in order to behave properly and have good manners. They would yell at us or ground us if we cursed or did something bad. Yelling at us is an example of a positive punishment because we don’t want to be yelled at therefore it is decreasing the likelihood of us doing that again. Grounding us would be an example of a negative punishment as we would be forbidden to do things that we want to do such as hang out with friends or use our phones because they are removing something that we desire. We also used shaping when we trained our dog. For example in order to make her sit or wait we had to use positive reinforcement by giving her a treat. Eventually she would sit or do the command without gaining a treat which is how operant conditioning is successful.
https://www.simplypsychology.org/operant-conditioning.html