Behavior modification is the use of empirically demonstrated behavior change techniques to improve behavior, such as altering an individual’s behaviors and reactions to stimuli through positive and negative reinforcement of adaptive behavior and/or the reduction of maladaptive behavior through positive and negative punishment.

The first use of the term behavior modification appears to have been by Edward Thorndike in 1911. His article Provisional laws of acquired behavior or learning makes frequent use of the term “modifying behavior”. Through early research in the 1940s and the 1950s the term was used by Joseph Wolpe’s research group. The experimental tradition in clinical psychology used it to refer to psychotherapeutic techniques derived from empirical research. It has since come to refer mainly to techniques for increasing adaptive behavior through reinforcement and decreasing maladaptive behavior through punishment (with emphasis on the former). Two related terms are behavior therapy and applied behavior analysis. Emphasizing the empirical roots of behavior modification, some authors consider it to be broader in scope and to subsume the other two categories of behavior change methods. Since techniques derived from behavioral psychology tend to be the most effective in altering behavior, most practitioners consider behavior modification along with behavior therapy and applied behavior analysis to be founded in behaviorism. While behavior modification encompasses applied behavior analysis and typically uses interventions based on the same behavioral principles, many behavior modifiers who are not applied behavior analysts tend to use packages of interventions and do not conduct functional assessments before intervening.

In recent years, the concept of punishment has had many critics, though these critiques tend not to apply to negative punishment (time-outs) and usually apply to the addition of some aversive event. The use of positive punishment by board-certified behavior analysts is restricted to extreme circumstances when all other forms of treatment have failed and when the behavior to be modified is a danger to the person or to others (see professional practice of behavior analysis). In clinical settings positive punishment is usually restricted using a spray bottle filled with water as an aversive event. When mis-used, extreme punishment can lead to affective (emotional) disorders, as well as to the target of the punishment eventually focusing only on avoiding punishment (i.e., “not getting caught”) rather than improving behavior.

Pear and Martin indicate that there are seven characteristics to behavior modification, They are:

• There is a strong emphasis on defining problems in terms of behavior that can be measured in some way.
• The treatment techniques are ways of altering an individual’s current environment to help that individual function more fully.
• The methods and rationales can be described precisely.
• The techniques are often applied in everyday life.
• The techniques are based largely on principles of learning - specifically operant conditioning and respondent conditioning
• There is a strong emphasis on scientific demonstration that a particular technique was responsible for a particular behavior change.
• There is a strong emphasis on accountability for everyone involved in a behavior modification program.

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