And you're gonna fail. Alright? So to eliminate harassment and to control the retaliation dynamic that we know is going to happen, let's not be shocked by it happening, we know what's going to happen. So let's plan for it. In order to control that retaliation dynamic that we're going to trigger by removing the reward, we have to understand the extinction protocol better. All right, what works to get it to stop and to do that, we have to have a better understanding of what constitutes a reward and a punishment and about reinforcement schedules.

Now, don't worry. This is a lot easier than it sounds. All right, and I'm told I explain it very, very well. So there's three types of reinforcement three, here, we got three, we got three. The first is positive where the animal likes what just happens this is very easy to understand. If we like something, we tend to do it more like we do something and we get an ice cream for it.

We're going to do that more if we like ice cream. There's also negative reinforcement where we don't like what just happened. So if the first time you have ice cream, it makes you barf, you're probably never gonna have ice cream again. Now, if any of you have had psychology in college, you might notice that I just used the word negative wrong. I'm using the word negative to help lay people understand the difference between something that feels good positive, and something that doesn't feel good, negative. Now, the third way, that a third thing that can happen is what's called a neutral response, which is neither positive or negative.

All right, so we like it. We like what happens, we don't like what happens, nothing happens neutral. Now, when you train an animal, use a combination of positive negative neutral responses to get the animal to do what you want them to do. And this is called what we call operant conditioning. There's an operator, okay? And we can use these same techniques to help us with Are our bully or harass her.

Now most people understand the instinctual Power of Positive and negative reinforcements. All right, what they usually completely forget is that there's also a third, third option. And that option is to not reinforce at all, what we call what I call a neutral response. The neutral response to the extinction process is absolutely critical. If you want to extinguish an unwanted behavior, you have to provide initial response. It's actually the removal of reward is what you need to do.

It's not just a neutral response, you're removing the reward, you're not replacing the reward with a punishment. You're simply removing the reward. That's what works. We have decades of research on this again, 70 years 70 years of research that all says the same thing. If you want to extinguish an unwanted behavior, you have to remove the reward and issue a neutral response. And this is counterintuitive.

All right. Most people think if I don't want something to happen, I have to punish it, I have to create a negative reinforcement, punish it. But what you need to understand is that negative reinforcement is still reinforcement. And you don't want to reinforce it at all, you want to eliminate the reward and the reinforcement to get rid of it. Right? If you negatively reinforced or punish or harass or you actually strengthen the unwanted behavior.

All right, the most effective way to eliminate unwanted behavior is to remove the reward and issue a neutral response, which is why no good trainer uses punishment, which is why there's a push to eliminate spanking and children because it serves no good purpose. It's actually counter productive. It strengthens the behavior you don't want. And so forth. you're removing the reward issuing a neutral response. punishment.

Negative reinforcement is reinforcement now The near neutral response, the removal of reward is so effective that almost all advice on how to stop a bully comes down to this, ignore them, and they'll go away. Right? You've all heard that ignore the bully and they'll go away, ignore the troll, and they'll go away. What this really means to translate it into, you know, behavioral speak, is that you're going to remove the reward and respond to them in a neutral way. And eventually, after they escalate through their extinction verse, they will go away and stop, kind of. So that's reward and punishment.

Let's move on to the concept of reinforcement schedule because this is also relevant to the process of extinguishing an unwanted behavior. A reinforcement schedule is how often you give out a reward or punishment or neutral response. And there's two basic ways you can reinforce an animal constantly or variably, constant or variable. Constant reinforcement is when you reward or punish or issue a response every single time the same response every time. It's consistent. A variable response is when you only reinforce or punish every once in a while.

Right? When you reinforce how often you reinforce, has a huge impact on how strongly an animal associates the reward with the behavior, right? And again, this is counterintuitive. But it turns out again, we have decades of research on this all says the same thing, no counter examples. Turns out that variable reinforcement creates stronger behavior. And every animal trainer knows this, when you sometimes reward and sometimes don't you actually strengthen the behavior.

All right, constantly reinforcing actually weakens the behavior. And every study ever done on behavioral dynamics with every animal ever studied, including humans shows this to be true. It is counterintuitive, but it's absolutely critical to understand what we need to do to get a bully to stop