Negative Reinforcement for Positive Behavior

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Negative Reinforcement

Negative reinforcement is a behavioral modification technique that removes a negative stimulus to encourage good behavior. Most of us likely remember the childhood moments when parents would tell us that if we cleaned our rooms, they would stop nagging at us and ask us to do so. This often caused us to clean our room to remove the unwanted behavior of a parent constantly telling us that our room is messy and needs cleaning.

While this may not have been the fastest way to get us to do our chores, it could be a particularly effective tool when we were presented with the unpleasant stimulus of a repeated phrase or bugging behavior. This type of action to produce desired behaviors is called negative reinforcement. This article will define negative reinforcement, provide examples, and help you find ways to use it to modify behavior in everyday life.

Understanding Negative Reinforcement

The negative reinforcement technique is popular in the classroom, with parents, and in many other situations. Negative reinforcement strengthens the desired behavior change in the target and increases the positive behaviors. By helping the target to make positive choices and avoid a negative outcome, they learn that the behavior change produces a result they wish to see again.

Negative reinforcement occurs as part of an operant conditioning scheme of behavioral learning. Operant conditioning is a way to shape behavior that involves either punishment or reward to encourage or avoid a particular behavior. Negative reinforcement consists of a reward removing the aversive stimulus to produce and enable this behavior to continue. Operant conditioning is commonly used to encourage human and animal behaviors. Teachers, parents, and others hope to avoid negative outcomes and encourage desired behaviors using these tools.

Types of Negative Reinforcement

There are two types of negative reinforcement: escape learning and avoidance learning. Escape learning is when the person does the desired behavior to make the undesirable stimulus stop or to escape it. Avoidance learning is when the person performs the behavior to avoid the aversive stimuli that are either promised, or they have experienced in the past. The major difference between these types is whether the person performs the behavior before or after the aversive stimulus begins. If it is before the stimulus, it is avoidant. Both types work when attempting to encourage behavior.

The Difference Between Positive and Negative Reinforcement

Before diving deeper into negative reinforcement techniques and examples, it is helpful to compare negative reinforcement to other forms of behavior modification to create a proper understanding. First, we should compare positive and negative reinforcement. Unlike negative reinforcement, positive reinforcement influences behavior by offering a reward when the specific behavior is completed, encouraging the person to continue.

Instead of removing an unpleasant stimulus, the person gains a pleasant stimulus or reward. The major difference here is that something is given to the person to encourage certain behaviors, while negative reinforcement takes away an unpleasant stimulus, such as a loud noise.

Reinforcement versus Punishment

People confuse negative reinforcement with punishment, especially when considering how to shape human behavior. Because the negative stimulus often feels like a punishment, many people view it as such. However, the two techniques have different purposes in training behavior. As we have discussed, positive or negative reinforcement exists to encourage a wanted behavior from a subject.

Conversely, punishment, whether positive or negative, seeks to stop the target from repeating an unwanted outcome or behavior. The action taken in a punishment scheme often occurs while the behavior is happening to stop it from continuing or as a bribe to halt it from the start.

A Quick Refresher on Terms with Examples

Because this article has used many terms to help us understand negative reinforcement in the overall scheme of altering behavior, it is important to pause and remember the basics of each term.

Positive

Positive in the context of behavior training means addition. The person gains something by altering their behavior in the desired way.

Negative

Negative in this context means removing something in exchange for a behavior change. Think of negatives as minus signs because they take something away. However, negatives are not necessarily bad, depending on what the person tries to accomplish.

Reinforcement

Reinforcement means that the instructor seeks to strengthen a behavior or encourage repetition. This is a technique for good behavior that needs to continue.

Punishment

Punishment is simply the technique for stopping a bad or unwanted behavior. By reacting to behaviors in a specific way, it signals to the subject that the behavior needs to decrease.

Positive Reinforcement

Positive reinforcement introduces a pleasant stimulus to encourage the behavior further. A good example is the chore chart with stickers that many of us had growing up. When you finish a chore, you must add a sticker or check a box, encouraging you to continue doing chores. While the sticker is a positive reinforcement, a certain number of stickers often leads to a better reward, such as a treat, a new book, or a favorite toy. Adding positive stimuli reinforced the behavior, and we continued to do our chores.

Negative Reinforcement

Negative reinforcement, on the other hand, occurs when the negative reinforcer removes an unpleasant situation or stimulus to encourage the likelihood of a good behavior repeating. One example of negative reinforcement is leaving the house early to avoid traffic on the way to work. If this allows a person to make it to work more quickly, the aversive outcome of being stuck in traffic is avoided, and leaving the house early may be encouraged.

While more of a silly example, the following example of negative reinforcement further demonstrates how behaviors may be negatively reinforced. Say you often get heartburn from a spicy meal. Still, you love spicy food, so it is unlikely that the addition of the unpleasant stimulus of heartburn will dissuade you, eliminating the possibility of positive punishment. However, suppose you remember to take heartburn meds and either stop or avoid the aversive stimulus of heartburn. In that case, you have negatively reinforced the behavior of taking meds to avoid the negative result of the spicy meal causing heartburn.

Positive Punishment

While it may be surprising to learn there are forms of punishment considered positive, the word positive in this context means addition. With this in mind, positive punishment means adding an unwanted stimulus to the situation to encourage the behavior to stop. For example, a parent may add extra chores to a list because a child used a credit card for a non-emergency item when the card was for emergencies only. Adding the other chores should dissuade the child from repeating the behavior of using the card in the future.

Negative Punishment

Like positive punishment, negative punishment seeks to stop a behavior from repeating. However, with negative punishment, a pleasant stimulus or consequence is removed to stop repetition. For example, this could mean staying inside for recess because a student lied about finishing their homework. The loss of recess should increase the likelihood of the child not lying.

With this breakdown in terms, we hopefully have created a better understanding of negative reinforcement and its definition for the rest of the article.

The Benefits and Issues of Negative Reinforcement for Desired Behavior

When negative reinforcement strategies are used correctly, they can increase the likelihood of desired behavior. Before you begin using negative reinforcement in the classroom or anywhere else, it is important to understand what the benefits are, as well as the potential issues that you may encounter. Negative reinforcement is not necessarily bad, but it needs to be used to maximize the benefits and avoid the issues.

Benefits

Negative reinforcement can benefit when used well and produce the following benefits.

Increase the Likelihood of Desired Behavior

Removing an aversive stimulus plays a major role in the likelihood that the behavior will strengthen and continue. This is the goal of operant conditioning and is a major benefit of the practice.

Quickly Effective

Because the child may not want to encounter the unpleasant consequence of not behaving a certain way, they often learn to participate in certain behaviors quickly, especially with reinforcement in the classroom. The reinforcement is often complete when they discover the behavior triggers the aversive stimulus to stop.

Long-Term Solution

Once a person learns that behaviors will remove something unpleasant, they will often continue to participate in the behavior and expect the same result. This will lead to a long-term solution unless the person experiences the same stimulus or consequence differently in the future.

Issues

Negative reinforcement does not come without its issues. The following are some examples.

Requires Specific Knowledge

Negative reinforcement can be difficult without knowing what a person may find unpleasant. Consider the following example of negative reinforcement. A child is told that they may not play with their favorite toy until they finish their chores. This requires that the person knows what the toy is and that the child would like to play with it. If a stimulus is not unpleasant, the reinforcement may not work.

Miscommunication

Negative reinforcement can often lead to miscommunications, especially when the reinforcement is taking place where there is a power dynamic. If there is little explanation of the aversive stimulus, the person may not understand it and may interpret it as harm or anger toward them.

Conclusion

Negative reinforcement can be a powerful tool for shaping behavior. However, when necessary, it must be used wisely and with positive reinforcement and punishment. From a child in the classroom to a coworker, many people may need to learn more about behavior, and negative reinforcement can help them achieve the desired behavior.

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