Negative Reinforcement
Definition
Negative reinforcement involves removing an aversive stimulus to increase the likelihood that a desired behavior will be repeated.
Analogy
Imagine if every time you clean your room, your parents stop nagging about it. The removal of their nagging (aversive stimulus) increases the chances that you'll clean your room (desired behavior) in the future.
Related terms
Escape Learning: A form of learning where an organism learns to perform a behavior to escape from an aversive stimulus. This is a type of negative reinforcement.
Avoidance Learning: A type of learning where an organism acquires responses that avoid an aversive stimulus before it starts.
Conditioned Response: The learned response to a previously neutral stimulus, which can be involved in both positive and negative reinforcement scenarios.
"Negative Reinforcement" appears in:
Study guides (2)
Practice Questions (7)
- Which of following best describes negative reinforcement?
- How have theories around negative reinforcement changed since their first introduction?
- What does 'negative reinforcement' refer to in operant conditioning?
- What is a primary difference between positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement in operant conditioning?
- Why would someone use negative reinforcement in operant conditioning training?
- How does punishment differ from negative reinforcement in operant conditioning?
- In Skinner's Operant Conditioning theory, what is meant by "negative reinforcement"?
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