Conflation of Negative Reinforcement and Punishment
Undergraduates in the neurosciences often make the mistake of conflating negative reinforcement and punishment. Part of the reason for this is that “negative reinforcement” is often used colloquially to refer to punishment, whereas in the psychological and neuroscientific literature, the term refers to reinforcement due to the cessation of an aversive stimulus (i.e., relief).
To overcome this issue, it is important to highlight to students that the keyword in “negative reinforcement” is “reinforcement,” which entails an outcome that increases the likelihood that an action will be repeated. Negative refers to the removal of a stimulus. By breaking down the words within these terms, and doing so early on, students are less likely to mistakenly conflate negative reinforcement with punishment.
Another strategy is to refer to negative reinforcement as relief and to couple that with the example of Tylenol or any other OTC pain reliever. Since those drugs are not pleasurable, per se, they exemplify the concept of negative reinforcement/relief. That can then be distinguished from positive reinforcement (or reward/pleasure), which elicited by things like opiates and other psychoactive drugs with high abuse liability. Finally, punishment can be defined as something that is aversive and noxious such as naloxone or rotten food that elicits food poisoning.
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