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Punishment (Psychology)
Any stimulus that decreases the likelihood of a prior response. Skinner, a leading behaviorist, identified two types of punishment as part of his theory of operant conditioning. A positive punisher weakens a response through the presentation of an averse stimulus, for example, scolding a child. A negative punisher weakens behavior by removing a stimulus that is ordinarily characterized as positive, for example, taking a toy away from a child. For more information, see Ferster and Skinner (1957).
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