.

Negative reinforcement is misunderstood.

Positive and Negative reinforcement is seriously misunderstood. It’s not something you need to create or apply – it exists everywhere. Yes, Skinner applied negative reinforcement in a lab – generally shock because it’s a lab, not the real world. Rats or pigeons and yes, even dogs won’t experience negative reinforcement naturally in a lab like they would in the real world – it has to be created. Negative reinforcement is what makes animals avoid doing stupid things. A pot of boiling water is negative reinforcement – you’ve learned how to deal with it without burning yourself – positive reinforcement. You have essentially been socialized to the boiling pot of water. When a parent tells a child “don’t go near the hot stove – it’ll burn you” – would you think the child would be better off if you socialized them to the hot stove? Let them experience the heat? I’m not telling you to put their hands on a hot damper.

Negative reinforcement isn’t always negative – and positive reinforcement isn’t always positive.

We seem to have this ideology that negative reinforcement is a condition that needs to be created or applied – then apply positive reinforcement or some form of punishment. But, negative reinforcement is a part of the environment – it already exists everywhere. It’s what keeps us safe – it’s actually a positive thing. You look both ways before stepping off a curb, if you don’t you might get hit by a car. Step outside, it’s cold – negative reinforcement, so you zip up your coat – positive reinforcement. But yet, we navigate negative reinforcement all the time – we walk by moving cars and we aren’t in a state of fear. It’s that constant negative reinforcement that we navigate every day. But we know how to “avoid”, we have learned through socialization to negative reinforcement”. We are creating positive reinforcement all the time – Skinner called it “self management of behaviors”. Trainers call it “avoidance”. Negative reinforcement is a place you don’t want to be – you want positive reinforcement.

The environment is shaping your behaviors – Skinner understood by changing the environment that he could shape YOUR behaviors. How did he learn this? Because he was doing experiments on animals – to understand us.

Fear is the biggest ‘negative reinforcer’ there is – it exists – but it can be created and reinforced. When you’re scared, you are existing in ‘negative reinforcement’ – a place you don’t want to be. No animals – including humans – want to live in negative reinforcement. If I exacted more negative reinforcement on you in that state – forcing a muzzle on you for example – or worse, punishment for being in that state – that would work right? Or how about I reward you with food for being in negative reinforcement? That would work right? That’s what we are doing to dogs – many times we are creating more negative reinforcement – then rewarding and/or punishing a dog that is already in negative reinforcement.

And we wonder why it doesn’t work? Then it’s condition the dog using operant conditioning.

Skinner defined “positive reinforcement” as the removal of “negative reinforcement” for a reason. He had to create negative reinforcement in a lab – the animals in his lab would never experience natural negative reinforcement like they would in the wild. Would a bird raised in a lab know to avoid a cat? They would never learn avoidance naturally. And they likely wouldn’t live very long in the wild because of it.

This is why socialization is so important – the dog is learning to navigate through all these negative reinforcers – learning avoidance. They are leaning good and bad – but they need to investigate. The dog is also learning things can be positive – not scary because they were socialized to it. Socialization is making the big scary world – “not a big deal”. If the environment is big deal to the dog – its a negative reinforcement. You can’t change the environment – all you can do is ask the dog to trust you in this environment, to trust your judgement/choices. Explore the environment – I got your back, trust me, I won’t let you get hurt – that’s “positive reinoforcement”.

Fear is lack of trust. Fear is the biggest negative reinforcement. Trust is the biggest positive reinforcement there is. Fear and desire – negative and positive reinforcement. Be calm, ask the dog to trust you, make things “not a big deal” – be socialized for the dog, and give them time to choose to join you. When a dog makes a choice – or a human – to overcome a fear?

You are being the “positive reinforcement” for the dog. That’s the biggest reward of all… No? You’re becoming the highest value treat in your dogs life.

You will never respect or be confident in that which you don’t trust – a relationship doesn’t exist. In order to learn to trust the dog, you’ve got to let them learn through social cognition, and learn right from wrong through making choices. But you want them to do it calmly.

B.F Skinner put the onus on the animal to get out of “negative reinforcement”, they had to figure it out. The problem today is choice – the dog isn’t getting that choice. They get more negative reinforcement, or punishment, or food reward.

And we wonder why it’s not working?

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4 Comments

  1. Nat White 18 February 2023

    Why does this make so much sense? I never thought of PR in that way.

  2. Misere 30 June 2023

    I just read two and a half paragraphs, and can’t continue because of the amount of irony in you saying “Positive and Negative reinforcement is seriously misunderstood.”
    To elaborate, and I’ll stick to the behaviorist theory of learning although you threw in cognitive and others in as well but presented them as behaviorist. An example you wrote, “You look both ways before stepping off a curb, if you don’t you might get hit by a car.”, as being negative reinforcement can only be true if you got hit by a car and ‘learned’ that way, which in an overwhelming majority of cases is not how the learning happens, but we use the third behavioral learning method which you ignored for some reason, called observational learning. In other words, a condition for learning through classical and operant conditioning is direct experience, but for observational learning it’s not.
    Further, “Step outside, it’s cold – negative reinforcement, so you zip up your coat – positive reinforcement.”, is just incorrect. and doesn’t make sense. The stimulus is first, followed by the target behavior, and then the reinforcement, not in any other order. And the example is not good because it has both reinforcement methods occuring at the same time. A proper way to word it though would be, “You feel cold (stimulus), you zipped up the jacket (target behavior), the cold is removed (reinforcement)” – negative reinforcement, since the reinforcement terminates/reduces an aversive stimulus. On the other hand, at the same time “You feel a lack of warmth (stimulus), you zipp up your jacket (targed behavior), you feel warm (reinforcement).” – positive reinforcement, since the reinforcement is adding/inducing a pleasant stimulus. But to be more precise, the part which is important for negative is removal, and for positive is the addition, the type of stimulus is just there to differentiate reinforcement from punishment. “But, negative reinforcement is a part of the environment – it already exists everywhere. It’s what keeps us safe – it’s actually a positive thing.” and then “No animals – including humans – want to live in negative reinforcement.” You can’t “live” in reinforcement. Fear can logically not be a reinforcer, ever, it can only be a punishment (something that causes a behavior to occur less frequently in the future).
    “If I exacted more negative reinforcement on you in that state – forcing a muzzle on you for example…” that has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of reinforcement but the exact opposite, it is punishment.
    I’ll just stop there, this is too much already. You need to have a good, long, and focused read on behaviorist learning theory, and make effort to properly understand it and its terminology. Positive and negative in operant conditioning do not have anything to do with good or bad or positivity or negativity, positive means something is added, negative means something is removed. Reinforcement is always trying to increase the frequency of the target behavior, and punishment is always trying to decreasse the frequency of the target behavior. Emotions and behaviors are two completly different things. An emotion cannot be directly reinforced. And for everybodies sake, please learn the difference between negative reinforcement and (negative and positive) punishment.
    I hope this is informative to you and helps in understanding the topic, it’s not as simple as one might think, and it’s only a fraction of learning and memory theories, since the behaviorist approach is only one of many and by now more or less outdated.

    • monty 30 June 2023 — Post author

      Are you a dog trainer or dog owner?

      Have you read Skinner? Have you listened to Dr. Michael Perone? Perone is carrying on Skinners’ work. It’s Perone that uses the cold and cars as an example. It’s all fascinating stuff.

      You would argue with Skinner himself – the man blamed for the creation of the quadrants. Trainers bastardized what he was doing in a lab and created the quadrants. Problem is, the human animal was Skinners target – us.

      Let me know, I’ll send you a book to read and a podcast. Or don’t. The sad reality for dogs is closed minds, you believe what you believe.

      Here’s Ivan Balabanov in a podcast with Dr. Perone. I’m impressed that Ivan uploaded this cause Perone neatly destroys dog training. Balanced and PR.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wgroDtl8mY

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