Punishment vs. Negative Reinforcement + 9 More Pairs of Psych Terms You ’re Getting Confused

By Christian Jarrett There are a lot of pairs of terms in psychology that sound as if they refer to the same thing, and can therefore be used interchangeably, when in fact they refer to different concepts that are distinct in important ways. As Emory University professor Scott Lilienfeld and his colleagues point out in their new open-access paper in Frontiers in Education, even experienced psychologists and science communicators sometimes confuse these pairs of terms, which inevitably impedes their understanding of the underlying concepts. Their new paper outlines 50 “frequently confused term pairs in psychology” from across different fields of psychology and related subjects. “Our list … should hopefully be a modest contribution toward enhancing psychological literacy and critical thinking in psychology more broadly,” they write. Below we’ve highlighted 10 of the pairs of psychology terms that Lilienfeld and his co-authors believe you might be getting confused (check the full paper for the other 40): “Negative Reinforcement” versus “Punishment” A few years ago ABC news reported “British Soccer Players Get Negative Reinforcement“. The story was about the players who’d played badly being made to drive around in an old, uncool car. But this wasn’t negative reinforcement, it was a punishment: an unpleasant experience intended to deter future bad play. Negative reinforcement, by contrast, is a ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Feature Source Type: blogs