Essay On Negative Reinforcement

Negative Reinforcement Related to Work Stress

Negative reinforcement is the removal of an unpleasant stimulus with the attempts to increase desired behavior. Examples of negative reinforcement includes constantly remind and nagging employees to be more productive, close monitoring of an employee and remove saturdays as a work day. Among of this, nagging creates a negative condition in which employees are subjected to an unpleasant situation which resulted in the presence of stress in workplace.

Work stress is the response people may have when job requirements do not match the worker’s capabilities, knowledges,needs and challenge their ability to cope (National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health 1999). Stressed employees are more likely to be unhealthy, less productive and less safe at work. The less motivated employees resulted in the lacking of spirit to fight with the market’s competitors，thus their organizations are less likely to succeed in a competitive market. Work stress comes from a variety of sources. It can be the role in organization, relationship at work, working environment and intrinsic to job like work overload. Work stress affects people in different ways.

Negative reinforcement uses the reward system. A person is rewarded for desired behavior by having something unpleasant removed.

A person is rewarded for desired behavior by having something unpleasant removed. This removal is the reward. For instance, employees may find it undesirable to be monitored closely in the workplace. Therefore, in order to avoid themselves from being monitored as closely anymore, they will always motivate themselves to accomplish their work to the highest standard. This removal of monitoring is the reward for them to do their job well consistently. However, studies have stated that monitored employees reported more stressful and anxiety, more anger and fatigue than non- monitored employees (Smith, et al.