Negative Rainforcement

Reinforcers are not always positive event, someone the reinforcing consequence is the removal
or avoidance of a negative event. Suppose the follow in the apartment next door plays his stereo so
loud that it has kept you awake every night this week. If you assertively ask him to turn if down and
the loud music stop, that consequence will reinforce your assertive behavior. Operant learning based on
negative reinforcement plays an important, but often unnoticed, role in influencing our behavior.
The concept of negative reinforcement is one that students frequently find confusing for two
reason. First, to many student, the name implies that a negative or undersirable behavior such as a bad
habit is being reinforced. That actually does happen a lot, but the behavior that is negatively reinforced
may be either desirable or undesirable. Second, even more student find the term negative reinforcement
confusing because it sounds like a new term for punishment, which it is not. When we look at the
concept of punishment later in this chapter, you will see that is a quite different phenomenon.
What the term negative reinforcement does mean is this. A behavior is reinforced(and, there,
becomes more likely to occur) because something negative (or unpleasant or aversive) is removed by
the behavior or does not happen at all because of the behavior. In the previous example, the loud music
was the negative thing that your assertive behavior got rid of. Your asking him to turn down the
volume was reinforced through negative reinforcement (stopping the loud music), and you probably
would be more likely to be assertive in the future as a result.
Two type of conditioning are based on negative reinforcement.

1. Escape conditioning

In escape conditioning, the behavior causes the negative event to stop. For example, if a young boy has
been confined to his room for an hour, that is probably a pretty negative situation to him. If he start to
cry softly and murmur pitifully that no one loves him, and if this causes his parent to relent in a few
minutes and let him out of his room, then negative reinforcement has occurred. Which behavior has
been strengthenerl?. Probably he will be much more likely to act pitifully the next time he is sent to his
room because it made something negative the confinement stop. Escape conditioning, therefore, is a
form of negative reinforcement because something negative is removed. It’s called escape conditioning
because the individual escapes, from something negative (in the sence of causing it to stop).

2. Avoidance Conditioning

In the other form of negative reinforcement, called avcidance conditioning, the behavior has the
consequence ot causing something negative not to happen when it otherwise would have happened.
Supposed you are terrified of pit bulldogs, but the route that you walk to campus takes you past a yark
where a particularly vicious pit bull is penned up. If you find a new route to school that does not take
you park a single pit bull, you will probably continue to take this route because it cause the negative
event of passing the pit bull not to occur. Even if it does make you feel a bit like a coward, finding a
new route is a highly reinforcing consequence. This is an example of avoidance conditioning, because
the behavior of talking a new route is reinforced by avoiding something negative (the pit bull)

Negative reinforcement is a very powerful method of reinforcement, so we learn patterns of

behavior quickly and easily from it. Unfortunately, what we learn are often immature ways of dealing
with unpleasant situations rather than mature ways of facling them directly. The child in our first
example would have been better off taking his punishment and learning how not to get into trouble next
time, and the college student would have been better off getting over the fear of the penned pit bull. It’s
often too easy to learn a quick and easy, though inappropriate, solution through negative reinforcement.

Incidentally, when the parent let the child who was acting pitifully out his room, the parent was
probably reinforced for that lapse in discipline, too. Through what principle of operant conditioning
was the parent reinforced?. Because the act of letting the child out of his room caused the child’s
unpleasant whining to stop, the parent was reinforced through escape conditioning. Negative
reinforcement of inappropriate behavior is a frequent occurrence that we need to avoid.
Punishment

Sometimes the consequence of behavior is negative, and as a result, the frequency of that behavior will
decrease. In other word, the behavior has been punished. For example, if you buy a new set of pots and
pans with metal handles and pick up a hot pans without a pots holder, a negative consequence will
surely occur. And you will probably not try to pick up your new pans in that way again. Punishment is
a negative consequence that leads to a reduction in the frequency of the behavior that produced it
(Church, 1969;Tarpy & Maye. 1978). When appropriately used, punishment can be an ethical and
valueable tool for discouraging inappropriate behavior. In our society, however, physical punishment is
still used with children by parents, teacher, and other in authority. In addition to the obvious ethical
issues in using physical punishment, there are serious dangers inherent in the use of any form of
punishment that must be weighed against its potential benefits.

Danger of punishment

The danger inherent in punishment are as follows;

1. In use of punishment is often reinforcing to the punisher. For example, if a parent spanks a child
who has been whinning and the spanking through negative reinforcement. This, unfortunately may
mean that the frequency of spankings, and perhaps their intensity, will increase, there by increasing
not only the amount of physical pain the child endures but also the dangers of child abuse.
2. punishment often has a generalized inhibiting effect on the individual. Repeatedly spanking a
child for “talking back” to you may lead the child to quit talking to you altogether. Similarly,
criticizing your bridge partner for mistakes may lead him or her to give up playing the game
altogether, or at least to stop playing with you.
3. We commonly react to physical punishment by learning to dislike the person who inflicts the
pain, and perhaps by reacting aggressively toward that person. Sometimes an individual takes out
his or her resentment on someone else if it’s not possible to react directly against the person who
gave the pain. Thus, punishment may solve one problem but not only lead to a worse problem
namely, aggression.
4. what we think is punishment is not always effective in punishing the behavior, in particular,
most teacher and parents (and many supervisors, roommates, etc.) think that criticism will punish
the behavior at which it’s aimed. However, in many settings, especially homes and classrooms
filled with young children, it has been demonstrated that criticism is often a positive reinforcer that
increases that rate of whatever behavior the criticism follows. This has been called the criticism trap
(Madsen, Becker, & Thomas, 1968). For example, some teachers and parents see a behavior they
do not like and criticize to get rid of it. But children are sometimes reinforced by the attention they
receive when criticized. In this way, the criticism reinforces rather than punishes the behavior, and
the criticized behavior increases in frequency. The adult then uses more criticism in an effort to
quell this unsbehavior. This reinforces the behavior even more and increases its rate in an upwardly
spiraling course.
5. Even when punishment is effective in suppressing an inappropriate behavior, it does not teach
the individual how to act more appropriately instead. Punishment used by it self may be self
defeating; it may suppress one inappropriate behavior only to be replaced by another one. It’s not
appropriate behaviors are taught so the individual to replace the inappropriate ones that any
progress can be made
Guidelines for the Use of punishment

The precedling list is an indictment of punishment as a method of changing behavior in childrearing,

industry, education, or any other setting. It should not be considered to be a total condemnation of
punishment, however. In some situations, punishment is a necessary method of changing behavior. For
example, in teaching a young child not to run out into a busy street, punishment may be the only
method that make sense. In these instance, however, every effort should be made to minimize the
negative side effect of punishment by following some guidelines for its use.
1. Do not use physical punishment. Taking away TV time from a 10 year old or placing a 4 year
old in a chair in the corner for 3 minutes is more effective than spanking, and certainly more
humane. Indeed, physical punishment usually backfires and causes children to behave worse rather
than better (O’Leary, 1995)
2. Make sure that you positively reinforce appropriate behavior to take the place of the
inappropriate behavior you are trying to eliminate. Punishment will not be effective in the long run
unless you are also reinforcing appropriate behavior.
3. Make it clear to the individual what behavior what behavior you are punishing and remove all
threat of punishment as soon as that behavior stops. In other words, it might be okay to punish a
certain behavior, but it does more harm than good to become generally angry at the other person for
doing something inappropriate. Do not punish people, punish specific behaviors. And stop
punishing when the inappropriate behavior ceases.
4. Do not mix punishment with rewards for the same behavior. For example, do not punish a child
for fighting and then apologetically hug and kiss the child you have just punished. Mixtures to this
sort are confusing and lead to inefficient learning.
5. once you have begun to punish, do not back down. In other word, do not reinforce begging,
pleading, or other inappropriate behavior by letting the individual out of the punishment. It both
nullifies the punishment and reinforces the begging and pleading through negative reinforcement.