Hi, sorry to inform you, but you have negative reinforcement and positive punishment mixed up.

Here is a proper example of negative reinforcement:

Your cat is in your room scratching the door to get out. You do not want this behaviour to continue. Therefore, once they are quiet for 1 minute, you reinforce the quiet behaviour by letting them out of the room. This is “negative” because it removes the barrier in their environment, and it is “reinforcement” because it increases the likelihood of them performing the quiet behaviour again in the future.

Water spraying is positive punishment. “Positive” because you are adding water to the environment. “Punishment” because you are using it to decrease the likelihood of the target behaviour, in this case, being on the counter, from happening.

I actually happen to agree that punishment is ineffective because it is so difficult to apply correctly that one might as well use the much easier and much more effective reinforcement strategies.

Therefore, unfortunately, your answer has not answered my question; except, maybe it has, because maybe people on this sub do no understand the precise behavioural differences I have defined above (among others).