Positive vs. Negative Reinforcement

Psychologists have been using positive vs. negative reinforcement for a very long time as a way to get someone to act or think a certain way. Reinforcement has been used in a variety of areas including child rearing, training animals and also for treatment of mental illnesses. Reinforcement is commonly used to treat people who are depressed or have an anxiety disorder because it can help the doctor make changes in the patients thoughts and to reward changes for the better in the patient.

What is Positive Reinforcement?

Positive reinforcement is one type of reinforcement with negative reinforcement being the other kind. Positive reinforcement involves rewarding someone for something right that he did. An example could be rewarding a child who got all A’s in school by taking him out to his favorite eating place. That is positive reinforcement. Positive reinforcement is thought to make a person more likely to continue to do the positive behavior at a later date so he can be rewarded again. Positive reinforcement is useful for treating anxiety and depression.

What is Negative Reinforcement?

Negative reinforcement is used to reduce the likelihood that a person will show an undesirable behavior again in the future by removing something that is unwanted. An example of this is the noise your car makes when you do not have your seat belt on. When you hear that noise, you are going to put your seat belt on to make it stop.

Using Reinforcement to Treat Anxiety and Depression

Psychologists have had success with positive and negative reinforcement for the treatment of depression and anxiety. An example of this is teaching patients ways to use relaxation techniques to lower their stress levels so that the uncomfortable symptoms they are having will go away and they can avoid a panic attack. Teaching them the tools to remove the uncomfortable symptoms is a form of negative reinforcement.

They also use positive reinforcement to help patients. For example, psychologists encourage patients who are depressed to think positively instead of negatively. Patients who are able to change their attitude so it is more positive, who try to spend more time smiling and thinking about their good qualities are going to be happier and feel better physically as well. When patients realize this, they want to feel happy so they are going to continue to try to have a positive outlook so they can keep this happy feeling.

The Problem with Positive vs. Negative Reinforcement

In some cases, reinforcement can end up encouraging the negative behaviors that come with anxiety and depression. An example of this positive vs. negative reinforcement is a person with depression whose family helps him by taking care of his home. The person who is depressed gets positive reinforcement for doing nothing and letting others take care of his problems.

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