Origins of antisocial behavior. Negative reinforcement and affect dysregulation of behavior as socialization mechanisms in family interaction.
Parents who retreat the moment a child yells teach that yelling works and later antisocial behavior blooms.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Shearn et al. (1997) watched families with boys who had conduct problems. They filmed family talks and coded every time a boy got angry or a parent gave in.
They tracked the same boys for two years. The team asked: do parents accidentally reward yelling by backing off? Does this teach worse trouble later?
What they found
Yes. When parents stopped nagging right after the boy exploded, the fits grew. Two years later these boys showed more antisocial acts.
Kids also learned to stay upset longer. Poor emotion control plus the payoff of 'mom backs off' predicted later delinquent behavior.
How this fits with other research
Thompson et al. (1974) saw the same loop earlier. Parents told to act tough made kids look deviant in just one visit. J et al. show the loop sticks for years, not minutes.
Siu et al. (2011) tested the engine in the lab. When a doll cried, college students kept feeding it to stop noise. The payoff is instant and powerful, just like the boys' yelling.
Perone (2003) warns the label 'negative reinforcement' can hide risks. He says any payoff can backfire. J et al. give the real-world proof: stopping the aversive moment now plants bigger problems later.
Why it matters
Check your parent training. If mom gives the iPad to halt a tantrum, you just saw negative reinforcement. Chart the escape pattern, then teach mom to stay calm and follow through. Break the loop early so the payoff for aggression dies out.
Get CEUs on This Topic — Free
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ on-demand CEUs including ethics, supervision, and clinical topics like this one. Plus a new live CEU every Wednesday.
Count how many times the parent stops demands right after problem behavior; insert a 5-second delay and praise compliance instead.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Theoretical models specifying the contribution of two social-familial mechanisms, negative reinforcement and affect dysregulation, to the development of child antisocial behavior were tested using a sample of 57 8- to 13-year-old boys referred for treatment of conduct problems. Negative reinforcement of boys' aggressive behavior and boys' affect dysregulation were found to covary with the boys' irritability toward parents and siblings and were reliable predictors of a composite measure of child antisocial behavior, defined by out-of-home placement, arrests, and school discipline incidents 2 years later. Reinforcement of aggression and affect dysregulation during family interaction may play complementary roles in the development of antisocial behavior by fostering the use of coercive means of dealing with social conflict. The findings are discussed in terms of research strategies for identifying social mechanisms contributing to child psychopathology and of implications for modification of current family interventions targeting child antisocial behavior.
Behavior modification, 1997 · doi:10.1177/01454455970212004