Negative punishment is a technique used in operant conditioning to decrease the likelihood of a behavior or response by taking away a favorable stimulus following that action. Negative punishment is the opposite of positive reinforcement, which involves adding a favorable stimulus to increase the likelihood of a behavior.

Examples of negative punishment include taking away a childs recess privilege to stop their disruption, giving a driver a parking ticket to stop their illegal parking, cutting a childs screen time to stop their tantrum, taking away a teenagers phone to stop their bad attitude, and charging a fee to stop people from paying their bills late.

Consistency is necessary for negative punishment to work, and it is important to note that negative punishment only works as long as the stimulus is consistently removed. Once the punishment stops, the undesired behavior will likely resume.

One drawback of negative punishment is that it does not provide information on the desired action, and it may cause unintended problems. For example, if a child throws a tantrum to get a toy, taking the toy away may cause the child to throw more tantrums in the future.

Negative punishment is different from negative reinforcement, which involves removing an aversive stimulus to increase the likelihood of a behavior. It is also important to note that punishment, whether positive or negative, should be used as a last resort if other reinforcement strategies have failed to work.