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So, it's easy to assume that the word "negative" is referring to the bad thing, rather than the taking away of something.Īs you can see, the scientific definitions of negative and positive reinforcement, as they were conceived by behavioral scientist B.F. This is where the confusion comes from, because if taking something away produces an agreeable result, then the thing that was taken away must have been bad. Many more examples of negative reinforcement in practice can be found here. This agreeable result encourages you to repeat the same behavior over and over (wearing the earplugs every night). Your behavior (putting in earplugs) causes something to be taken away (the noise from the neighbors), which produces an agreeable result (sleep). You start wearing earplugs at night, and now you can sleep. When you try to sleep at night, they always wake you up. Let's look at a real world example of negative reinforcement. The agreeable result encourages them to repeat the same behavior over and over.Įxamples of Negative Reinforcement in Action Therefore, negative reinforcement is when a person's behavior causes something to be taken away, which produces an agreeable result. Negative is when something is taken away. Reinforcement is when something agreeable happens. To us, the term positive usually means something good, and the term negative usually means something bad.īut, in science, positive means that something is added, and negative means that something is taken away. Now, let's define the terms "positive" and "negative". Reinforcement always produces a result that is agreeable to the subject. There is no "disagreeable reinforcement". The agreeable result encourages them to repeat the same behavior over and over. According to the science of psychology, reinforcement is when a person's behavior produces a result that they consider to be agreeable. Let's start with the meaning of "reinforcement". The definition is actually a bit complicated, so let's go through it step by step. Most people assume that negative reinforcement is very similar to punishment, but they actually have very different meanings.

Negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement are two of those terms that originated in science, yet are thrown around casually in conversation so much that most people misuse them all the time.