One of your employees periodically fails to clean up his work area at the end of the work shift. Instead of issuing punishment or discipline, you decide to try an extinction approach to the situation. Accordingly, you might:
A) reassign the worker to a less desirable job.
B) fire the worker.
C) clean up the employee's work area yourself.
D) ignore the worker's undesirable actions for a while.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

Extinction is a behavior modification technique that involves ignoring an undesirable behavior so that it eventually stops. In this scenario, the best choice would be to ignore the employee's failure to clean up their work area for a period of time in the hopes that they will eventually stop the behavior on their own. Reassigning the worker to a less desirable job or firing them would not be appropriate approaches since the behavior in question is not a major infraction. Cleaning up the employee's work area yourself would be enabling the behavior, which is not the goal of an extinction approach.

One of Your Employees Periodically Fails to Clean Up His