Post originally by John Nephew at 2003-05-24 14:11:14
Converted from Phorums BB System

> I realize that this has nothing to do with
> the subject at hand, but there's no way
> positive reinforcement is inherently more
> effective than negative reinforcement.

If I recall my college psych classes -- first, negative reinforcement and punishment are different things, and second, yes, positive reinforcement is more effective than punishment.

It makes sense if you think about it. Suppose I want you to train you to wash my car. I could try two different approaches:

1. When you wash my car, I give you a cookie.

2. When you fail to wash my car, I beat you senseless.

Which one is more likely to teach you to wash my car? Assume I can not directly communicate to you, except by providing either positive reinforcement or punishment.

Think of it from the trainee's point of view.

Situation 1: I was walking down the street, saw this nice car in the driveway, and thought hey, why not wash it? So I did. Then, poof! Here's a tasty cookie. Maybe I should wash cars more often?

Situation 2: I was walking down the street, noticed a nice car in a driveway, and then when I walked by this guy comes up to me and beats me senseless. What the hell was that about? Now cars scare me.

See http://allpsych.com/psychology101/reinforcement.html or http://www.users.csbsju.edu/~tcreed/pb/operant.html for some discussions.

> Back to the topic, shouldn't role-playing
> be its own reward?

That's an interesting turn of phrase. It suggests that roleplaying itself should be the positive reinforcer. For some people, that may be the case. But for others, positive reinforcement of roleplaying (whether giving XP, or heaping praise on good role-players, or finding that being known as a great roleplayer gets you lots of hot dates, or whatever) is what is needed, somewhere along the way, to turn roleplaying into a reward itself (in other words, a conditioned reinforcer).

> If you're going for the endorphin rush
> rather than internalizing the desire to be
> good on its own merits, are you really
> doing "good" or just selfishly collecting
> endorphins?

This is where they call in the philosophers, and debate as to whether morality is anything other than a learned set of behaviors, not a lot different from Pavlov's dog.