The replacement of ordinary steel bars by negative Poisson's ratio (NPR) steel bars to improve the seismic performance of short columns is investigated in this study. NPR steel bars is a new type of reinforcement with negative Poisson's ratio effect and high strength and ductility. In this paper, six short column members were designed. Among them, P-RC1 and P-UHTCC1 short columns were used as controls, and the remaining four specimens were reinforced by NPR steel bars. The failure mode, cracking pattern, hysteresis characteristics, plastic deformation capacity, shear strength, stiffness degradation and energy dissipation capacity of the specimens were investigated through lateral cyclic loading tests. The experimental results showed that the shear capacity of short concrete columns reinforced with NPR steel bars increased by 20.91%−22.64% and the cumulative energy dissipation capacity increased by 45.7%−63.3%. The short UHTCC columns reinforced with NPR steel bars showed an increase in shear capacity of 23.08%−35.48% and an increase in cumulative energy consumption capacity of 17.3%−28.5%. And the RC columns shear strength prediction model based on GB50010–2010 specification is relatively reasonable to be used for the evaluation of shear strength of short columns reinforced with NPR steel bars.