Behavior Mini-Course Episode 5 - From Bribery to Reinforcement

All right, we are on to the big one. It's time to go from bribery to reinforcement. I love talking about reinforcement, and I love talking about bribery too, because so often these words are misunderstood and they are confused. And guess what? Reinforcement works every time, and bribery, as we'll talk about in a minute, may work on the short term, but it is not successful in the long term. So first, let's define these two concepts. First, what is reinforcement? Reinforcement is something that comes after a behavior that increases the chance of that behavior happening again in the future. Guys, the key word here is after. This something awesome, the reinforcement, has to come after the behavior. Reinforcement is all about building up the good that's there. It's not changing what just happened in the moment because we can't change that. We want to see more of those behaviors tomorrow, next week, next month. Now bribery is a little different. Bribery is something that comes before a behavior in hopes that a desired behavior will come. So see the difference already? Bribery is coming before the behavior. It's coming on a promise. It's coming on a hope. And oftentimes it goes along with a hope of stopping a negative behavior. We typically use a bribe when we see negative behavior happening. Because we want the positive behavior to start, right? If we were engaging in positive behavior, we wouldn't have to use a bribe. So very often this goes along with reinforcing the negative behavior because the sequence of events tends to be a negative behavior is happening, meaning we're not seeing the positive behavior that we want. So we give a bribe in hopes of causing that positive behavior to happen. But when we do that, to get a little behavior analytic here, we're actually reinforcing the negative behavior. So let's look at a few examples. So let's say you— Johnny is at a restaurant with his mom. They're having to wait for a really long time. At first he's squirming and then whining, and next he's in full-blown meltdown mode in the middle of the restaurant. And she's like, Johnny, please, please be quiet. Here's the iPad. She gives iPad before she sees the quiet. She gives iPad on the hope that this will cause him to be quiet. Next we have Allison. Allison is sitting in class and she goes to get her favorite dolphin book, but guess what? Someone else takes the dolphin book. So she takes a different book and just starts ripping out every single page. And the teacher's like, okay, okay, here's the dolphin book. Now promise me you won't rip these pages. The expectation is sitting quietly with a book, right? Without ripping pages. We haven't seen her do this yet. We're giving that dolphin book on the hope that she will sit quietly with this book. And last we have Jeremy. He's struggling with his work, so he's kind of popping in and out of his chair. He's breaking his pencils, he's swearing, he's crumbling up his paper. Teacher's like, "Okay, okay, I'll help you, but please sit nicely at your desk." Does she see him sit nicely at his desk? Not yet, but she's giving that help and attention first. So the problem is that bribery works and then it doesn't because in the moment, Bribery is successful. Look at these 3 situations. He started sitting quietly in the restaurant. She started reading the book. He started doing his work and sitting nicely in his desk. But what have all of these kids learned? They have all learned that negative behaviors result in something awesome. So what are they likely to do in the future to get what they want? Yep, a negative behavior. Who else's behavior is reinforced in these bribery scenarios? Ooh, this is where we get real tricky, guys. And this is why this becomes a vicious cycle, is in those moments of success, the teacher or the parent's behavior is also reinforced because the negative behavior stopped. The positive behavior started as a result of the bribe. So the teacher or the parent is more likely to use a bribe in a future, in the future, because they're like, yeah, you know what worked last time? Handing the iPad or doing this, that worked last time. But this is really problematic in the long term. It becomes a vicious cycle. A negative behavior happens, we give bribery to stop that negative behavior and start that positive behavior, and then the child's more likely to use negative behavior in the future, and the adult is more likely to use bribes in the future. Keeps going and going and going. This is what happens when we try to stop this. This is why behaviors escalate, guys. A negative behavior happens, the adult does not reinforce the behavior, they do not provide the bribe to hope for the positive behavior, so the child escalates. They're like, "Man, that didn't work. Maybe I should try screaming louder. Maybe I should try pushing my desk over. Maybe I should try laying on the floor." And then in those situations, sometimes it becomes so extreme that it becomes maybe a safety concern that we need positive behaviors to start, right? So we have to do what we have to do to give in and get positive behaviors to start. So we do the bribe again, and then the child now learns that, hey, I should start with that escalated behavior. So we see things snowball very quickly. Reinforcement works so much better because we are living in a cycle of being proactive. Reinforcement actually is away from the challenging behavior but will cause that decrease in the challenging behavior. So with reinforcement, a positive behavior happens, the child receives reinforcement, the child wants to do the positive behavior again, so they do. Look at how lovely that is. I would way, way, way rather live in this circle. Reinforcement is all about being proactive. It's about preventing the problem behavior before it even starts. So before Johnny got bored and upset at the restaurant, we're gonna give him an activity or a snack, something that's gonna keep him engaged while he's waiting. For Allison, who was struggling not having her favorite book, we're gonna set a timer for a doable amount of time for her to wait quietly without ripping pages for the dolphin book. Then she'll get the dolphin book. And we're gonna teach Jeremy to ask for help. And right away when he asks for help, we're gonna be there ready to give our attention and all of our help and support But that's going to be contingent on that appropriate asking. The difference here is really coercion versus cooperation. With bribes, the payoff is begrudging compliance, but with reinforcement, the consequence encourages the individual to perform in a similar way. We want to move away from bribery. Make sure that that something awesome comes after the positive behaviors, not on the promise. I mean, guys, let's say you hire a contractor to do some work on your house. Let's say you're going to build a deck. The contractor comes out, looks at your house, is like, hey, it's going to be $1,000. "you have to pay me in full today and I'm gonna come back next week and do it." Are you handing over that stack of cash? I mean, I hope not, guys. That guy could just peace out and never come back again. That's not how that works, right? Maybe there's a deposit or you sign a contract or you're like, "Hey, I'll pay you half now and half at the end." No way, right? That reinforcement has to come at the end. The preferred item has to come after. Now I get asked a lot, "Well, what about things like I'm working for token economies first then?" These are all tools. These are tools that are showing first work, then the reinforcer is coming. You're not giving it, you're just telling them about it. So you're not giving the preferred item. You're just using a tool that is accessible and understandable to tell them about the preferred item. So now your homework: look at the way you are using reinforcement in your classroom or your setting and make sure it is not unintentionally bribery. ¡Gracias!