Final answer:
Negative punishment involves removing a desirable stimulus to decrease unwanted behavior and can be used for new problem behaviors without changing the existing plan.
Step-by-step explanation:
The good thing about negative punishment is that it can be used with new problem behaviors as they emerge without revising the plan. Unlike positive punishment, which involves adding an undesirable stimulus, negative punishment involves the removal of a pleasant stimulus to decrease unwanted behavior. This principle operates in strategies such as time-outs where a child is removed from a desirable activity, like playing with friends, in order to decrease the occurrence of misbehavior.
For instance, if a child misbehaves, taking away a favorite toy can effectively reduce the misbehavior without instilling fear or aggression. This is because negative punishment removes the motivation for the undesirable behavior rather than instilling fear as a deterrent. Behavior modification techniques, such as negative punishment, are integral to operant conditioning used to replace undesirable behaviors with more socially acceptable ones.