Why does downvoting affect your own reputation? I just downvoted an answer for the first time today, and noticed that I lost 1 reputation score. Obviously 1 "point" isn't a big deal. Whoop-dee-doo! But on a serious note, what's the reasoning behind this? My guess: Discourage users from unnecessarily downvoting on things, so that only, truly, those questions/answers are "bad" are downvoted upon?

Discourages users from unnecessarily downvoting on things, so that only, truly, those questions/answers are "bad" are downvoted upon.