Probably the most colloquially misunderstood and misused terms in education is Negative Reinforcement. More often than not, the term gets thrown around as synonym for punishment. When I started looking up materials for this article, I was too operating from that assumption. This undoubtably happens because of our cultural relation to the word negative as a bad thing, or as a way of saying “no,” like in the military. But, that is not what negative reinforcement is.
Let’s first start with, “what is reinforcement?” Reinforcement is any activity that results in the increased likelihood of a desired response. Thus, in the eyes of psychology, a reinforcement is a good thing. A useful colloquial synonym would be conditioning.
Now let’s address the problematic word, negative.
When using the wrong connotation of “bad” and applied to reinforcement, it is only logical that we would cognitively link “negative” to mean “bad reinforcement” or punishment. However, the terms negative and positive reinforcement come from the science world of behavioral psychology where negative and positive have two very clear definitions. Positive, adds. Negative, takes away or remove. Thus the term negative reinforcement literally means the act of either removing a stimuli from an environment, or removing a task/action from a scenario to result in the increased likelihood of a desired response. This differs from punishment, which is the consequential response to an action.
This can appear in our classrooms in a number of ways. Take the non-ADHD student that is using an unsanctioned fidget spinner. As a teacher, you may take away the fidget spinner for the time being, and return it at the end of class. In this case, you have removed the stimuli that is causing a distraction from the desired action, which is paying attention to the lesson. If the student pays attention more as a result of these actions, then you have created a negative reinforcement.
Another example may be taking away homework if students finish all of their in-class scheduled activities. In this case, what has been removed is the homework. The desired behavior which is being sought is that the students get everything done in the allotted class time.
In both of these instances, the removal of something resulted in a “good” result. If you are still having some mental resistance to this idea, that’s perfectly reasonable as some actions could be viewed as through both lenses of punishment and negative reinforcement. That’s why it is important to communicate to your students why an action is being done. To make things a little easier, think of negative as subtraction. Just as subtracting two from four isn’t a bad thing, subtracting a stimuli or activity isn’t a bad thing.
So here are some further examples of what constitute negative reinforcements and what do not.
Negative reinforcement
- Taking away a fidget spinner to increase a student’s attention on the lesson.
- Taking away homework if students finish everything in class.
- Turning off distracting audio sounds in a classroom.
- Shutting the blinds to prevent students from staring into portals of imagination.
- Seating a child at the front of the class so that they can’t get distracted by wanting to fidget with or talk to others.
Negative punishment: this is not negative reinforcement.
- Taking away points in a game for failure to follow classroom rules.
- Giving extra homework for failing to complete all tasks in class.
- Giving a low grade for not participating in class.
Please look my other posts on positive reinforcement, punishment, the use of positive and negative reinforcement, and punishment in class.
To check out more resources on negative reinforcement check out Simply Psychology on operant conditioning for a more detailed article on negative reinforcement and it’s implementations. You can also check out AllPsych for a graphic depiction of negative and positive reinforcement.
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