What Exactly Are You Reinforcing?

Positive reinforcement has become a very popular phrase nowadays. And why not, “When I use positive reinforcement I’m positively impacting someone’s behavior.” Isn’t that right? Well, not exactly. The ‘positive’ in positive reinforcement is more of an indicator that a certain behavior increased – not necessarily that it is good or beneficial in nature, per se. In Behaviorism, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ hold no value judgments – much like a doctor’s test results being negative for an illness is actually a good outcome.

Many times, we are positively reinforcing actions or responses without even consciously realizing it. For instance, a co-worker we’ll call Mark once shared a situation in which no matter how hard he tried; his relationship with a fellow staff member remained lukewarm at best. On several occasions, Mark felt rebuffed and as if his co-worker was not-so-politely dismissing him. After a few days had passed, Mark finally confronted him about it. As it turns out, there was an unusually high workload placed on his colleague with a deadline looming. The coworker’s antisocial behavior was positively reinforcing the behavior of avoidance by his fellow staff. In this example, it’s important to understand that the behavior of avoidance was being positively reinforced. In effect, Mark was being punished when he approached him and the busy co-worker’s behavior was reinforced by having more time to complete the task.

Other times, our attempts at positive reinforcement (for a desired response) can actually have the opposite effect. Take for instance a parent with a goal of getting their son or daughter to lose weight. After a serious discussion with them on the importance of healthy eating and exercise, several other actions are taken; special diets, books, websites, activities. Unfortunately, this results in a 15 pound increase in the child’s weight! The truth is that the only thing we can say with certainty here is that these attempts have not positively reinforced weight loss for this individual (and in fact may have positively reinforced weigh gain instead!)

So, how do you know if your attempts at positively reinforcing a desired behavior are working? It sounds simple, but if the behavior you are seeking to increase actually does increase – then that behavior is being reinforced. This, of course swings both ways, since an undesired behavior can be positively reinforced as well. The best approach to this is to make an honest assessment of the behavior pattern of your student, co-worker or family member. If the individual’s behavior increases in frequency or intensity, then it is possible that you are inadvertently, positively reinforcing it.