Simple psychology for daily life: Negative reinforcement

Adapted from images by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash and trudith on Pixabay.

Negative reinforcement is a behaviour conditioning strategy. It involves removing a negative aspect of the targets environment upon their exhibiting desired behaviour to further encourage that behaviour. Negative reinforcement is sometimes mistaken for a form of punishment.

Examples of negative reinforcement include:

• An alarm clock being silent when a sleeper wakes to stop it.
• A baby ceasing its crying once the parent attends to its needs.
• A utility company ending reminder letters once an overdue bill is paid.

Unlike positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement usually doesn’t strive to improve the situation of the target beyond baseline, but return it to a state of normality. For that reason, employing it in interpersonal scenarios is risky, as it can be taken as nagging and damage a relationship.

Negative reinforcement can be used by:

• Software developers
• Debt seekers
• Parents
• Teachers
• Coaches

Negative reinforcement is generally more difficult to employ in day-to-day life without negative consequences. Here are some examples of ways it can be used relatively safely:

• Identifying something your child struggles with and removing it for them, such as plastic sheets on a bed or training wheels on a bike.
• Including warnings such as car door open alarms, or seat-belt unfastened buzzers, or software needs an update icons.
• Interrupting procrastinating children by asking if they’ve finished their homework yet.
• Reminding an athlete to drop a bad habit as they’re making it — “keep that left up”.

Negative reinforcement has an advantage over positive reinforcement in that it can be easily employed before a task is complete. In a similar situation, positive reinforcement may act as a carrot on a stick, but may also serve as a distraction.

Coupling negative reinforcement with positive reinforcement is a valid and useful strategy. For example, pestering a child to do their homework, and subsequently praising and rewarding them when the homework is completed.