I thought Negative Reinforcement was the same as punishment and I was wrong.

Get low grades and lose video game privileges. This is punishment.

Negative Reinforcement is removing something unpleasant to promote good behavior. Get good grades and you don’t have to do dishes for a week. Just like positive reinforcement is adding something to promote good behavior. Get good grades and we buy you a new board game.

I learned this three months ago and promptly forgot. I had to look it up to write this article. As irony would have it, I read about this because the author, Scott Young was making a point that remembering something new is hard when we have a wrong idea about it!

So true!