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The Three Things That Must Be In Place For an Event to Qualify as Being a Punishment Procedure
Speaking now in the established terminology of behavioral science, there are three things that must be in place before punishment can correctly be said to have taken place:
- The Target Response is Emitted:
The subject engages in the targeted behavior you are trying to stop. - An Aversive Consequence Follows:
Soon after he makes the response, he is presented with an aversive. - The Result:
As a result of having experienced that aversive consequence, your subject engages in that behavior less often in the future.
If those three things are in place, then, by the definition accepted throughout behavioral science, punishment is considered to have occurred.
Please note that an attempt to punish is only actually considered to have been punishment if it proves to have succeeded in reducing the rate of the response targeted for change. Should your attempt to punish fail to reduce the rate of the response, it is simply considered to have been a failed attempt that by definition, cannot correctly be categorized as having constituted punishment. Hence, to the mindset of a true behaviorist, by weight of definition and by force of sheer semantics, punishment always works.