BlogStudyPositive and Negative Reinforcement

Positive and Negative Reinforcement

Are you a parent or teacher? Are you wondering how to motivate and reinforce good behaviour? I’m going to show you how you can use positive and negative reinforcement to ‘persuade’ your child/student to improve their behaviour.

What is Reinforcement?

No, I’m not talking about calling extra personnel to increase the strength of an army. And I’m not talking about strengthening a wall or barricade.

The reinforcement I’m discussing is from Applied Behaviour Analysis and is about getting someone to do more of what you want.

Reinforcement is used to increase the probability of certain behaviour. It’s done by delivering or removing stimulus immediately after a behaviour. 

If we apply the following methods of positive and negative reinforcement correctly, we will increase the likelihood of our child acting in a way that we would like.

Step 1: Positive Reinforcement

You’re probably the most familiar with this type of reinforcement.

Positive reinforcement works by displaying a motivating stimulus after the child has demonstrated the desired behaviour.

This makes the behaviour more likely to be repeated again in the future.

Positive reinforcement strengthens a behaviour by providing a consequence an individual finds rewarding. This simply means that if our child behaves well, we reward them by giving them something that makes them happy.

For example:

  • After completing 25 minutes of continuous focused study (behaviour), a mother/father/teacher gives the child/student praise (reinforcing stimulus) “Awesome work”.
  • After receiving really good marks on his/her school report (behaviour), a parent gives their child $50 (reinforcing Stimulus) to celebrate.
  • A parent/teacher allows 10 minutes extra “Phone/Internet Time” (reinforcing stimulus) after the student has worked quietly and finished all of their work for the day (behaviour).

As you can see, positive reinforcement is common but effective. It is perhaps the simplest form of encouragement and praise can go a long way in enhancing the motivation of our children/students.

Step 2: Negative Reinforcement

Negative reinforcement is another great way to increase the number of times which you a see a desired behaviour in your child/student.

Negative reinforcement occurs when an unpleasant stimulus is removed after a desirable behaviour is demonstrated.

What we’re trying to do here is increase the likelihood of a particular behaviour (productive study, listening, doing chores) happening more often by removing something that our child/student finds unpleasant (nagging, chores, duties).

Note: Negative reinforcement is not a punishment.

Negative reinforcement is about increasing a behaviour. Punishment is about decreasing a behaviour.

Here we need to be careful. We are trying to strengthen a beneficial behaviour by removing an unpleasant stimulus from our children/student’s environment.

For example:

  • Your child does their homework (behaviour) to stop you from nagging them (removal of unpleasant stimulus).
  • A student does well in an exam (behaviour) to stop you from criticising them or telling them to work harder (removal of unpleasant stimulus).
  • Your child can’t use their phone (unpleasant stimulus) until they’ve finished their assignment (behaviour).

Which is more powerful?

Research shows that positive reinforcement is more powerful than negative reinforcement for improving behaviour.

I would suggest using some positive reinforcement first. If your child responds, that’s fantastic. If they don’t, then you may need to use some negative reinforcement (hassle them a little bit) as well.

When to use them? – Vary the time of reinforcements.

It turns out that reinforcement is best used sporadically. When it is less predictable, your child/student will respond faster and will be less likely to stop the positive behaviour once acquired.

Similarly to fishing or gambling, behaviour is reinforced after an unpredictable and varied number of times.

Conclusion

Remember that when thinking about reinforcement:

  • The end result is to increase the behaviour that we would like to see.
  • It’s not a punishment (A punishment is to reduce a behaviour, i.e. a $400 fine punishes you for speeding and you hopefully don’t speed next time).
  • Positive reinforcement is adding something positive to the child/student (verbal praise, rewards) in order to increase a response.
  • Negative reinforcement is subtracting something negative from the child/student (perpetual nagging, criticism, preventing phone use) in order to increase a response.

Good Luck!

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Thomas Woolley loves Economics and Business Studies. He completed his HSC in 2013 and has been working at Art of Smart since 2014. He enjoys helping out his students whilst studying B Commerce / B Education at UNSW to become an actual economics/business studies teacher in 2018. Since high school Thomas has also learned to scuba dive, salsa dance, and he can fly a quadcopter like a pro. However, he still cannot skateboard.

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