An extinction burst is a concept from behavioral psychology. It involves the concept of elimination of a behavior by refusing to reinforce it.
The best example of this is a child’s tantrum. Parents react to tantrums, which is why they often work, but the point of the tantrum is primarily attention. So when the parent reacts, it reinforces the tantrum and increases the frequency of it. What many parents fail to understand is that even a spank or yelling is still attention and still helps to reinforce the tantrum.
What is generally very effective about reducing tantrums is not attention, but a complete dearth of it. As difficult as it is to do so, the tantrum will generally go away once the attention is removed.
But first there is the extinction burst.
The extinction burst is basically what happens when the tantrum’s not working any longer– it actually gets worse for a time before it fades away. If you’ve ever seen kids throwing a tantrum, you’ve probably seen this — some more informed parents will let the tantrum go and they don’t actually look like good parents when doing it– they look kind of mean and uncaring, but it’s often the right thing to do despite appearances.
So what happens is that the kid just starts ramping up that tantrum– thinking “I just need to try harder.” And sometimes this works– the parent relents, gives the attention (which may be yelling or a slap, but it’s still attention) and the kid gets rewarded for the tantrum and gets rewarded for making the tantrum worse.
