Why Negative Reinforcement is Actually Quite Positive!

Today, I wanted to talk about a misnomer I hear all the time that drives me up a wall. Negative reinforcement. Many people hear the phrase and picture scenes of scolding and beratement. They believe that since positive reinforcement means rewarding someone then negative reinforcement must mean punishing someone. I’d like to clear this up right now.

The concepts of negative and positive reinforcement (and negative and positive punishment, which we will get to in a second) came from B.F. Skinner, a behavioral scientist in the 20th century. He suggested that actions were not as freely chosen as we may think, but instead they are a product of our perception of the results of said actions. To put it another way, we are more likely to repeat actions if we think something good will happen as a result. He called this, reinforcement. By the same token, we are less likely to repeat an action if we think something bad will happen. He called this, punishment.  (Please note, this is an extremely over-simplified version of Mr. Skinner’s life work, but it will suffice for our purposes.)

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