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.
What would be a good reinforcer for humans? Maybe for a child, it would be the promise of a toy if they cleaned her room, a piece of candy for every desired behavior, or even a big high-five after a job well done.
primary 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.
secondary reinforcer
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. For example, if you called out “Great shot!” every time your friend scored a goal, that would be a secondary reinforcer. 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 a behavior chart? They also are secondary reinforcers.
Secondary reinforcers can be great motivators. Sometimes smaller secondary reinforcers can be earned to work up to larger reinforcers, like in a sticker chart situation where a child gets a new toy for every 10 stickers. Entire behavior management systems, known as token economies, are built around the use of these kinds of token reinforcers.
In a token economy, a “token” is a tangible item or symbol that serves as a representation of a reinforcer. These tokens can be exchanged for desired goods, services, or privileges after a targeted behavior is performed. Essentially, tokens act as stand-ins for actual rewards and are given immediately after the desired behavior occurs, making the connection between the behavior and the reward more salient. Token economies have been found to be very effective at modifying behavior in a variety of settings such as schools, prisons, and mental hospitals.