Most people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder do not know what intermittent reinforcement means. This is not something that they do on purpose to manipulate people. The reality is that Narcissists often accidentally duplicate the conditions that psychologists call “intermittent reinforcement” because they lack the stability or desire to give any form of consistent positive reinforcement.
Their mood changes as their sense of being special shifts in response to the presence or lack of external validation. This leads to changes in how they behave towards their intimate partner. The intermittent quality of their behavior—sometimes being nice, sometimes nasty—leads people to connect this to the principle of intermittent reinforcement.
What is intermittent reinforcement?
When psychologists investigated what reward system worked best in getting people to continue to work for a reward long after the reward stopped appearing, they found the following:
Reward each time: When people get rewarded every time they do a desired behavior, if you stop rewarding them, they will do it a couple of times more to check and then stop.
Reward after a set number: If the person gets a reward after doing the behavior 10 times, then they will usually stop after the second or third set of 10 is not rewarded.
Reward on a time schedule: If you give a reward every 20 minutes and then stop, people tend not to do the behavior at all until close to 20 minutes have passed. When you stop giving the reward, they may try in another 20 minutes and maybe once more. Then they figure out that there will be no more rewards, so they stop the behavior.
Reward on a random schedule: This is intermittent reinforcement. The person never knows when they will get rewarded. This leads them to continue the behavior the longest and to occasionally try again even after days of no rewards.
Do people with other personality disorders use intermittent reinforcement?
Yes. From an object relations theoretical point of view, everyone who had a personality disorder lacks whole object relations and object constancy. This means that they cannot form an integrated, stable, and realistic picture of themselves and other people. Instead they “split” and see people as either all-good or all-bad.
In brief, the following are the typical all-good and all-bad versions common to the three main categories of personality disorders.
Borderline: Lovable vs Unlovable
Narcissist: Special vs Worthless
Schizoid: Safe vs Unsafe
Punchline: Anyone who is unstable and lacks whole object relations and object constancy will be unable to form a stable relationship with their mate. This means that sometimes they will feel good about the mate and be nice to the person, and sometimes they will hate them and act mean. Because the mate never knows which response will occur, they are more likely to continue to hang around and act nice in the hopes of eliciting their mate’s good side.
Elinor Greenberg, PhD, CGP
In private practice and the author of the book: Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations.
www.elinorgreenberg.com