You discover a new route to work that takes less time and features less traffic than your normal route (aversive stimulus). Your kids start doing their chores without being asked (positive outcome) to avoid you nagging them to do chores (aversive stimulus.)
Your fear of getting sunburnt is the aversive stimulus. The fear of sunburn causes you to slather on sunscreen beforehand. Negative Reinforcement ExamplesĪs humans, we use negative reinforcement every day, and may not realize it. The goal is that through the removal, termination, reduction, or postponement, the aversive event will not occur. Negative reinforcement includes one of the following in response to the behavior: They learned that when a light came on, the electric current would start, so they learned to press the lever immediately. Skinner found that the rats learned to avoid the electrical shock by flipping a lever before the current ever started. The consequence of the action (not being shocked) reinforced the behavior (flipping the lever switch). The rat moved around the box and then bumped into the lever that would turn off the electrical current. To support this theory, Skinner conducted experiments on negative reinforcement by placing a rat in a Skinner Box and subjecting it to a sequence of mild electrical shocks.
Skinner found that when using negative reinforcement, a behavior is strengthened by stopping, removing, or avoiding a negative outcome or aversive stimulus (Skinner, 1963, Operant Behavior). Skinner, an American phycologist who studied behaviorism, first introduced the term negative reinforcement in his Operant Conditioning theory.