Positive reinforcement

Making sure that when people do what you want them to do, they are rewarded with a positive consequence.

People do things (ie behave) in anticipation of certain consequences. If, after having done something, the consequence is ‘nice’, then the behaviour is said to have been positively reinforced.

Positive reinforcement encourages people, and its opposite, punishment, discourages them. Most people find life a mixture of nice and nasty experiences, and behaviour is aimed at maximising the nice experiences and minimising the nasty ones. This sounds very bland, but in practice it is complicated by the fact that what is nice for one person is nasty for another and vice versa. For example, one person may find it nice to be rewarded for good work by being taken out for a slap-up dinner, whereas another person may be embarrassed by the whole business and have preferred a quiet word of thanks. A third person may resent the waste of money and prefer to have been given a bonus to spend as he or she wishes.

Reinforcement, or lack of it, plays a major part in all behaviour, and is especially important when attempting to get people to do what you want them to do. Here is a simple illustration. Suppose your boss asks you for suggestions about how a particular problem could be solved and you immediately respond with some ideas. If your boss listens, agrees with your suggestions and even adds to them, then (providing you found this ‘nice’) your behaviour of putting forward ideas will have been positively reinforced. In similar circumstances you are, therefore, more likely to come forward with ideas again.

If, on the other hand, your boss kept chasing you for ideas and generally put pressure on you until he got ideas that he considered satisfactory, then, providing you found the pressure ‘nasty’ and its cessation ‘nice’, behaviour of putting forward ideas would also have been reinforced. This, however, would not be positive so much as negative reinforcement, ie it was nice when the pressure stopped. Your boss’s behaviour of chasing you and putting pressure on is likely to have been positively reinforced, ie it was ‘nice’ for him when you finally came up with ideas that he found satisfactory. So, at the same time, your behaviour is being negatively reinforced and your boss’s behaviour positively reinforced.

So positive reinforcement is anything that happens soon after the behaviour in question and that is welcomed by the recipient. Negative reinforcement is something unwelcome that happens before or during the behaviour in question has occurred. Both types of reinforcement increase the frequency of behaviour.

Whenever you want to get someone to do more of something, be careful to use either or both of the types of reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is the most straightforward.