Behaviorist theory
Behaviorism claims that the only thing powerful enough to spur people into action is the promise of reward or the fear of punishment.
The most widely understood theoretical model of how punishment works comes from behaviorist psychology, which looks at punishment as one kind of conditioning. The behaviorist theory is the theory that underlies most coercive punishment in the world, from parents spanking their children to nations jailing their citizens.
This understanding of punishment is that whenever a subject—and it’s always very objectifying, a “subject,” like an animal or a machine, not a complex human being—whenever a subject exhibits an unwanted behavior, you administer an aversive stimulus. Over time the subject will exhibit the behavior less and less, until it ceases. Easy as that.
The thing to understand about behaviorist theory is that it’s mostly based on experiments with subjects that have little or no power to leave, to avoid the punishment, or to fight back. Pigeons in cages are good subjects for straight-up behaviorism. Human beings, not so much.
Even with pigeons, the effectiveness of punishment only lasts as long as the experiment lasts. To be effective, punishment has to be administered immediately, severely, and consistently, to a level that’s hard to replicate outside of a lab. Once the punishment is stopped, the behavior tends to come back.
On the same principle, money as a reward may actually buy off one’s intrinsic motivation for an activity. Under some circumstances the reasons people do things can’t all be added up together. Sometimes, they’ll cancel each other out.
Punishing children produces children who behave the way their punishers want them to only when they are being watched. Punitive prison systems actually increase their inmates’ likelihood of committing further crimes once released.
Shame, retribution, and punishment will never produce long-lasting, healthy, positive change. The behaviorist theory of punishment does not work.
(This was before I was logging exact quotes and citations! 🤦🏻‍♀️ But Humankind: A Hopeful History and The Dominance Playbook were both valuable sources.)