As with many other variables in life, behavior can either increase/continue to occur or decrease/cease to occur. Determining if a behavior will increase or decrease is based on the “consequence” part of the ABCs of behavior (see related post). A reinforcing consequence will increase the likelihood of the behavior occurring in the future. A punishing consequence will decrease the likelihood of the behavior occurring in the future.
Within reinforcement and punishment, there are positive and negative components. With positive reinforcement or positive punishment, something is added or increased to the consequence after the behavior. With negative reinforcement or punishment, something is removed or decreased to the
Let’s take this one small step at a time:
- Positive Reinforcement: Something is added or increased to the consequence that will increase the likelihood of engaging in a particular behavior in the future. For example, after you try something new with your hair (cut and/or color) and get a ton of compliments, you’re more likely to risk a new style in the future. The compliments are an added consequence for the behavior of getting a new hairstyle and reinforce the likelihood of trying a new style in the future.
- Negative Reinforcement: Something is removed or decreased to the consequence that will increase the likelihood of engaging in a particular behavior in the future. For example, when you don’t put your seatbelt on before you start driving, your car starts binging incessantly at you. In order to get the binging to stop, you put on your seatbelt. In the future, you’re more likely to put your seatbelt on faster to cease the binging from your car.
- Positive Punishment: Something is added or increased to the consequence that will decrease the likelihood of engaging in a particular behavior in the future. For example, if the speed limit is 65mph on the Thruway and you’re driving 76mph and you get pulled over and handed a ticket, you’re less likely to drive above the speed limit in the future. The addition of the ticket (the consequence) for driving over the speed limit (the behavior) decreases the likelihood of engaging in that behavior in the future.
- Negative Punishment: Something is removed or decreased to the consequence that will decrease the likelihood of engaging in a particular behavior in the future. For example, back in your youthful days when you lived with your parents and had a curfew, did you ever get home after curfew and get caught? Chances are, you were “grounded”, which meant you lost privileges (either going out with friends for a certain period of time or loss of access to video games, etc)- this removal or decrease in access to a preferred activity acted as a form of negative punishment so in the future you were less likely to break curfew.
In the field of Applied Behavior Analysis, we often use punishment (positive or negative) as a last resort when trying to change behavior. The problem with punishment is that it doesn’t teach what someone SHOULD be doing; it only focuses on what someone should not be doing. We’ve probably all had a teacher or supervisor who would always tell us what was being done wrong but wouldn’t provide insight as to how to do it the right way. That’s the aim of ABA and why we often use reinforcement to change behavior. That being said, we do need to decrease an unwanted/aberrant/challenging/inappropriate behavior while we also increase and reinforce
A loophole to the punishment contingency is called extinction, and it’s pretty much exactly as it sounds. During extinction, a behavior analyst “extinguishes” an unwanted behavior that had previously been reinforced. A real-life example of extinction would be when you put money into a vending machine: typically, when you put in money and press the buttons, you get the snack you’re craving. Sometimes, though, the vending machine breaks and after you push the buttons, your snack gets stuck. What do you do? Many of us begin to engage in other behaviors: kicking the machine, shaking it, pushing the buttons repeatedly, etc. These behaviors occur as part of an extinction burst: the previously reinforced behavior (putting in money and pushing the buttons to get a snack) has not been reinforced.
The same is true during extinction for maladaptive behavior. Imagine a child who engages in tantrum behavior to gain attention from her mother. Usually, her mother immediately provides the child with attention and works to figure out what the child might want (reinforcing the tantrum behavior). One day, the mother is busy and isn’t able to immediately engage with the child. The child realizes she doesn’t have her mother’s attention and begins to engage in other behaviors, such as kicking the floor or wall, crying, screaming, basically “upping the ante” to try to get her mother’s attention. During extinction, it’s IMPERATIVE (and I can not stress this enough) that the mother in this situation does not give the child attention until she is acting more appropriately. If the mother were to hear the screaming and crying and immediately give her child attention, the child learns that she can just bring her behavior to “that level” in order to get the attention she’s looking for. The next time her mother tries ignoring her behavior, the child already knows that her mother has given in in the past and will continue to increase her challenging behavior.