Negative reinforcement

It was one of the weekdays wherein I had an unexpected work and had to take off in the morning. I did not realize then that this particular day was going to become a day to remember for the wrong reason but it had nothing to do with the unexpected work that I had.

BTW, the unexpected work was my son’s progress review with his teacher. It got delayed, however I had to wait patiently with a smile intact on my face since she is my son’s teacher and she looked strict even to the parents. By the time, we could complete our reviews, I was delayed and was hurrying up to the office.

When I say hurrying up, I mean driving little faster than your usual speed which helps only the extent of saving a couple of minutes and it’s not a big deal.  Even then the sense of urgency in me was pushing me and was overtaking the logic. After all, you feel some time is saved when you overtake few vehicles on the road.  An illusional satisfaction without any real sense. So I was driving faster, of course, within the limits but missed the NO-FREE TURN (which means you cannot drive without green signal) to be stopped by a traffic constable.

Things that happened right after that were 1) verification of driving license 2) verification of vehicle documents and 3) Penalty and then I was let go.

Points to ponder

The penalty that was meant to be a negative reinforcement for violation of a traffic rule had 3 important elements as given below: I really liked it and I think it should be there in any negative reinforcements and at Workplaces too.

# Immediate: It was “immediate” without any delay. If it’s delayed, it gets diluted and loses its effect.  

# Future risk: Every penalty is linked to your driving license and repeated violation will spell a doom.  So you know the risk potential which would act as a mental deterrence for not repeating in future too.  If it’s not linked to the driving license, every violation will be treated as a stand-alone violations in an isolation and there will be no mental deterrence to not repeat it.

#Quantum of punishment: I remember to have paid few hundreds which I think was is in line with the gravity of the mistake. Anything less or more would have defeated the purpose of the negative reinforcement.

I think all these three elements are applicable in any workplace situations too wherein you want to give an effective negative reinforcement to change an unacceptable behavior. The only thing that you would want to add is to not reprimand in front of other and make it one-on-one.

All these element are applicable to positive reinforcement too when you want to encourage and reinforce the acceptable behavioral traits, i.e., it has to be immediate, should have future benefits (instead of risk), appropriate quantum of rewards (instead of punishment) and should be in front of others (instead of one-on-one)

So next time, when you want to give any reinforcement, be it positive or negative, do bear in mind these important elements. They could be game-changers.

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO