this post was submitted on 01 Jun 2026
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Explain Like I'm Five
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Both negative (when bell, I will hit you) and positive reinforcement (when bell, I will give food) are associated with Pavlov's dog experiments (for shockingly obvious reasons).
For PTSD and other traumatic things, this is an example of negative reinforcement; something bad happened and something neutral happened, now they are associated forever in the victim's mind. i.e.
Soldiers seeing their friends get blown up while in a humvee and associating any music playing or the humvee engine sound with that scene.
When you have a 'Pavlovian response' it is a stimulus (bell) that makes your mind consciously or unconsciously remember the reward/punishment (food) that happened at the same time; causing an involuntary response (hunger/salivation in the original experiment).