They Lied to You: Punishment is Better Than Reward. This is Why.

You thought reward is better than punishment? This study proves you wrong.

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About Thoughty2
Thoughty2 (Arran) is a British YouTuber and gatekeeper of useless facts. Thoughty2 creates mind-blowing factual videos, on the weirdest, wackiest and most interesting topics about space, physics, tech, politics, conspiracy theories, and opinion.
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Editor: Theo Dodridge

[danii]

“Punishment is better than reward”
Drunk dads after a six pack: Hell yeah!

[paulantony]

“Punishment is better than reward.”
Every masochist ever : I knew I wasn’t weird.

[perqm]

That girl in the thumbnail looks like she is getting both punishment and reward..

[ItsOverTenThousand]

Kids thinking: Cool, I can do things right. Im so good.
Adults thinking: Omg, I dont want to do things wrong again. Im so bad.

[mentalpopcorn]

1990: Ok we need to teach people how to drag and drop so I made solitaire

1992: We forgot to teach them how to click first. There's chaos everyone! Release minesweeper!

[Jfreek]

"He looked at it like you've just asked him to launch a nuclear missile with a sandwich."

*The forbidden sandwich.*

[pablovenerez]

Punishment creates obedience
Reward creates complacency
It's a good mixture of both to create integrity

[peterbelovics]

*Reward is better than punishment*

Gordon Ramsay: hold my beer

[KingOath]

This is the key point regardless of adult, child or animal:

If the adult, child or animal doesn’t understand why their action or behaviour was wrong, punishment is not only useless but damaging. On the other hand, if they know (or should know) that the behaviour is wrong or have been reminded before and continue the behaviour, punishment is very important and absolutely neccesary.

Reward is completely different. There should always be at least some type of reward for positive actions or behaviours, with the degree of reward increasing as the frequency or magnitude of positive action or behaviour increases.

Lack of punishment, lack of reward, undue punishment and undue reward are all equally terrible things that can cause severe problems in the life of a human or animal.

In fact, I would say that a large percentage of the social problems facing our society are caused by these 4 things, especially when they are allowed to occur during childhood but also certainly in previously well balanced adults.

[ouroboricscribe]

"Something changes drastically in the brain between being a child and an adult"

Yup, years of being brainwashed to obey in the "education" system, were curiosity is taken to die, independence becomes dependence, complacency becomes the norm and the will of your masters becomes your own. You are taught to please, of course negative feedback is going to trigger those 15 years of Pavlovian Conditioning.

[monkiram]

A good takeaway from this video is that we as humans are already intrinsically motivated to improve. We don't necessarily need external pressures like rewards or punishments. They won't necessarily change the rate of improvement, especially when it comes to developing complex skills that take lots of time and energy. What they might do though, is affect morale. From my experience, rewards boost morale and motivation, whereas punishments lead to burnout and discouragement.

[alwaysovercomingbear]

This tells me that BALANCE is really important, when raising

[Tivis]

Litterally Everyone: we must shown them that doing the right thing leads to succ-

Thoughty2: B E A T T H E C H I L D R E N

[mrt_]

The best in my opinion is a combination of positive, and negative reinforcement.... Positive reinforcement to make you feel proud of accomplishing something, and negative reinforcement to make you understand you did something wrong. The important part is not to give too much negative reinforcement, because our minds love to focus on the negatives, forgetting that we actually accomplished something. And if there is too much negative reinforcement we will end up being scared of doing something wrong, and then end up fearing doing something wrong, which will stop us from dong "hey, I wonder if this will work", and instead think "no, no, no, AAAA!". If people end up doing the latter, then people will end up being indecisive, instead of creative.

[thatoneguy]

"The young adults showed much greater improvement when they were punished"
Maybe they discovered a new fetish ?

[DavidBrocekArt]

42's videos in a nutshell:

Anything: **exists**
Thoughty: "It is actually the very opposite from what you have been thinking your whole life."

(PS: love ya, mustache man)

[woosh_police]

TL;DR: basically
Kids punish: ooh noo
Adult punish: ooh yeah harder daddy

[itisinfactpaul]

Negative reinforcement and punishment are different things. Negative reinforcement would be removing a negative stimulus (e.g "you don't have to do the dishes tonight.) Other than that, great video!

[sigmasonthejeep]

*praise is more effective than punishment*

desi parents: are u challenging me?

[pcdtrse]

I found that you were often confusing negative reinforcement and punishment in your videos. To be more precise, there are four types of learning in operant conditioning:


-Positive Reinforcement [adding a stimulus that will increase the chance of a desired behaviour being repeated, e.g. getting a raise (the stimulus) for doing a good job (the desired behaviour) in your work]


-Negative Reinforcement [adding a stimulus that if removed will increase the chance of the desired behaviour being repeated, e.g. the state wants you to drive according to the law, so they added an annoying beeping noise to cars that is sounded when you don't buckle your seatbelt. By putting on your seatbelt, you stop the annoying beeping ( the stimulus), but at the same time you drive by the law (which is the desired behaviour)]


-Positive punishment [ adding an unpleasant stimulus that will decrease the chance of an undesired behaviour to be repeated, e.g. receiving a speed ticket for driving too fast so it won't be repeated)


-Negative Punishment [taking away something pleasant to decrease the chance of an undesired behaviour reoccurring, e.g. Your child misbehaved during a class in school, so you punish your child by taking away his/her tablet for a week.




It is common for people to confuse negative reinforcement with punishment just like you did in 03:04-03:15 or in 05:56-06:13


However, there is a difference that separates those two. Reinforcement is to *increase* the likelihood of a desired behaviour, while punishment is to *decrease* the likelihood of an undesired behaviour... just wanted to point that out