Would harming oneself to support positive growth even work?

So, it has come to the attention of myself and my friends that one of our friends harms himself regularly, both mentally and physically, for making mistakes, whether small or large. He also refuses to accept any kind of consolation, and even gets angry when myself or others try to help him out or cheer him up. I understand he believes that humans learn better from negative reinforcement than positive, but without any positive reinforcement whatsoever, is he even achieving anything? Every time he gets 99% or less on a quiz, he literally slaps himself, and apparently with enough force that we can hear it a few tables away. He constantly insults and berates himself for not understanding parts of his homework, or even so much as 'not holding chopsticks correctly'. All of these small things have driven most people away, since most other college students just want to study, hang out, and chill here. No one wants to deal with someone exuding so much negativity, and even my friends and I sit at least 2 tables away to bear with his negativity. I want a few questions answered:

1. Does his lifestyle have any positive impacts that outsiders could observe? Obviously, he's not going to observe the positive impacts of his beliefs and lifestyle on his own.

2. Will his lifestyle create enough positive changes in himself, so that the positive eventually outweighs the negative, even if it would take an extremely long time?

3. Can we, as the few friends he has, do anything to make his life easier, if only by supporting his beliefs somehow? We don't wish to berate him or anything, because we've judged that would enable him and make his situation worse, but still we need to help him somehow...

4. People have been picking fights with him, and intentionally looking to get a rise out of him. My friends and I can't be there to interrupt these situations all the time, and we fear that he'll flip out and do something that will get him expelled/imprisoned. Is there any way we can help him?

5. Even my friends and I have limits to our patience. Is there anything we can do that will make dealing with him more bearable? After all, if we abandon him, no one else will likely stand up for him.

No way that's self-made attitude, it's most likely the result of years of parental bullying or the way he grew up, anyway not his own doing.

We all find someway to push ourselves but it sounds like he lacks discipline and self esteem

get him laid?

Not always I use to be like that to an extent and no one ever bullied me or made me that way. I was always a perfectionist and was very hard on myself personally. I even use to bite myself if I felt I needed punishment, though I kicked that habit years ago. Some people can be pressured into this sort of behavior but not it just depends. The personality of a person really does factor into this to an extent.

Your friend has a perfectionist mentality, they strive for something perfect but we all know that is impossible. He feels he's never good enough and as a result punishes himself because he feels he deserves it. With this kind of behavior it's difficult to really do much other then to just be there for your friend. I know this may be difficult and only do what you personally can handle, but sometimes just being there for the person helps even if they don't realize it. Also antagonizing him to get a rise out of him won't help, a person with this type of mentality wants to be disciplined and wants this sort of reaction. I know I wanted my parents to get upset over me when I felt I needed to be punished, but it was just because I "felt it was right" in a sense for whatever I thought was wrong.

The worse case scenario with your friend is that he could stress himself out to the point of depression and potentially sucicide. Don't take this as it will happen, but from someone that has gone to the extreme with this type of thing, you can burn yourself out always trying to be better and hurting yourself in the process.

The only way to really fix this kind of thing is to just talk with your friend and have them get their feelings out. Usually these people are stressed, anxious, a little depressed, and fear something. For me it was the fear of being judged and hated for not doing good enough, but I know through the help of family and friends I learned that life isn't measured in successes and failures, you just live and do your best. If you fail it's not the end of the world.

All I can say again is to just be there for your friend as best you can and if you worry or suspect he may harm himself to the point his life or others are threatened then talk to someone about it. And don't get upset if you can't help your friend, this type of behavior is hard to deal with so just do your best and ultimately what he does with his life is up to him.