When you are trying to teach a new skill, whether it's teaching your dog to sit or getting yourself to stop doomscrolling before bed, rewarding good behavior is often better than punishing mistakes.

A long-standing debate in neuroscience is whether classical and operant conditioning are mechanistically similar or distinct. The feeding behavior of Aplysia provides a model system suitable for ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American While second nature to many of us, driving a ...

Negative reinforcement encourages specific behaviors by removing or avoiding negative consequences or stimuli. It is different than punishment, which aims to discourage a specific behavior. Negative ...

I have written previously about the fact that in today’s increasingly digital world, not every person who is compulsive with pornography is a traditional (trauma-driven) compulsive person. (See my ...