Do you remember performing well with teachers who would award students with stars and candies? Do you remember feeling proud of habits commended by your elders and family members? Positive reinforcement creates a powerful surge of energy in the brain's reward centres.
It's a simple formula: we perform better and embrace habits more readily when rewarded for our performance and practices. At times, positive enforcement occurs in the most natural of ways. For instance, leaving your bus seat for an older woman results in praise, appreciation, and high self-esteem. Therefore, these positive reinforcers eliminate the discomfort of standing on a moving bus for the remaining commute.
In workplace environments, positive reinforcement results from appreciative managers and intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Keep reading to take a closer look at how positive reinforcement helps us in the long run.
Personal & Professional Growth
Positive reinforcement is instrumental in achieving personal and professional growth. Our parents, teachers, peers, bosses, and colleagues keep us motivated and focus with praise, rewards, and appreciation. Likewise, dynamic leaders and employers utilize positive reinforcement as a strategy to boost motivation, productivity, and efficiency levels.
Leaders encourage their employees to pursue higher education to enjoy in-house promotions and career advancement opportunities. In addition, motivation and rewards encourage professionals to build their expertise and respond to market demands for skills and training.
Professionals working in authoritative and inflexible work environments often lose the will to expand their skillsets. So, naturally, their draining jobs and demanding bosses render them incapable of prioritizing their personal and professional growth. For instance, nurses, young doctors, and aspiring healthcare policymakers often struggle to combine education and work routines.
Today, aspiring policymakers and public health professionals can pursue a masters in public health online to actualize their professional goals. In addition, online learning infrastructure has made the pursuit of education incredibly easier. However, professionals still rely on positive reinforcement to feel motivated enough to take the initiative.
The power of positive reinforcement allows us to identify opportunities even in times of great turmoil. For instance, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic has created unprecedented suffering and disastrous economic implications. But it has also increased the demand for skilled public health and clinical professionals.
A Rewarding Lifestyle
Children do not embrace positive and healthy habits with forceful cajoling, unhealthy parenting, and strict disciplining. Instead, they may practice positive behaviors out of fear, but they will abandon these habits at the first opportunity.
Similarly, angry and strict bosses manage to get results, but they often complain of low quality and lack of creativity. You see, positive reinforcement and motivation inspire creativity and efficiency because they bolster self-esteem. Organizations use positive reinforcement models to encourage employees to align their professional goals with organizational vision.
In contrast, shattering an employee's self-esteem never results in productivity and motivation. Therefore, autocratic and authoritative organizations often suffer from high absenteeism and employee turnover rates. Consequently, employees strive to escape such organizations as authoritarian leaders shatter their self-esteem and reduce their life quality.
Positive reinforcement is vital for a rewarding and fulfilling lifestyle. It allows us to feel proud and honored by our dedication to our work, healthy habits, and positive behaviors.
Embracing Healthy Habits
Many parents struggle to realize that bashing their children for their eating habits often results in an eating disorder. As a result, some children end up avoiding food altogether, while others end up overeating and gaining weight. Similarly, teachers who are constantly criticizing and snubbing students end up undermining their confidence and self-esteem.
In contrast, parents who reward their children for eating healthy meals and respecting their elders inspire discipline and positive behaviors. Likewise, teachers who hand out candies and rewards encourage their students to strive for better results and enhanced performance.
As we begin to unravel the impact of positive reinforcement, we must explore Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Humans thrive on love, a sense of belonging, high self-esteem, psychological care and comforts, and the drive for self-actualization. Positive reinforcement makes us feel loved, appreciated, respected, praised, and honored.
Therefore, it encourages us to embrace habits that result in high self-esteem through appreciation, respect, and praise.
Enhanced Productivity & Focus
We rely on our productivity levels, focus on pursuing goals, set realistic milestones, and actualize our vision. For some, their goals revolve around maintaining a healthy and lean body. For others, their goals revolve around financial stability and wealth generation.
Motivation and positive reinforcement inspire productivity, brimming us with positive energy. This energy keeps us grounded and focused, giving us the mental stimulation we need to chase our goals. In contrast, lack of motivation proves distracting, and we end up losing sight of our objectives. At times, strict and rigid regimes force us to deliver results, but these results lack our creativity and potential.
Positive reinforcement inspires us to fulfill all our responsibilities, at home and work, with enthusiasm and dedication. This dedication stems from the pride and happiness we find in rewards, recognition, appreciation, and applause. While criticism and negativity reinforce unhealthy and unproductive behaviors, rewards make us accountable for our growth.
Character Development & Strength
Positive reinforcement is instrumental in character development and building our moral and ethical values as children. We carry these values into adolescence and adulthood, shaping our interactions, personality, and character.
Undue criticism, negative outbursts, and consistent hostility give rise to rebellion in children. They adopt unhealthy and harmful habits to rebel against rigidly hurtful criticism. In contrast, appreciation encourages us to embrace healthy and responsible lifestyles and ingrain them within our personalities and lifestyles.
Conclusion
Much like Maslow explained, human beings thrive on motivation, high self-esteem, and intrinsic rewards. We seek applause and appreciation for our hard work and dedication, for it inspires us to do better and continue improving. Positive reinforcement isn't just a strategy or a technique specific to learning or working environments. It's also a personality trait that inspires us to appreciate, uplift, and empower others.