Which term describes withholding rewards to reduce dog behavior?

• A. Punishment
• B. Negative Punishment
• C. Reinforcement
• D. Positive Reinforcement

Answer: (B)

Withholding rewards to reduce a dog’s behavior is negative punishment. In operant conditioning, you decrease an unwanted behavior by removing a valued consequence at the moment the behavior occurs. For example, if a dog jumps for attention, you stop giving attention (the reward) when the jump happens; the loss of attention discourages the jumping. This differs from reinforcement, which aims to increase behavior—positive reinforcement adds a reward to encourage a behavior, while negative reinforcement removes an unpleasant condition to encourage a behavior (like easing pressure when the dog stops pulling). Positive punishment would add something aversive to try to suppress the behavior. So withholding rewards is the negative punishment option.