Avoiding Punishment Is Its Own Reward
July 11, 2006
To give your child an incentive to take out the garbage, you might offer to buy her a treat, or you might threaten to withhold her regular allowance. Does the child respond the same way to reward as it does to avoiding punishment? Psychologists have evidence from certain kinds of behavioral experiments to believe that avoiding punishment is itself a reward.
This one is tricky, but it seems as though the same part of the brain is activated when one earns a reward or avoids a punishment.
