This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American
We call it 'trick or treat' but we all know the chances are much higher of getting treats on Halloween night. Similarly, it seems that scientists have a higher probability of publishing research about reward rather than research about punishment.
I queried 'reward' and 'punishment' in the following databases of academic literature: Google Scholar, Scirus, Web of Science, SpringerLink, Ingenta, the journal Science, the journal Nature, and JSTOR. In the results below, you'll find 50% to 990% more publications with the keyword 'reward' than 'punishment', with the exception of the JSTOR database, which lists more articles with 'punishment' -- perhaps because it incorporates much more from the humanities and contains more historical research.
Why do scientists seem to be more focused on reward?
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*Update November 12, 2011: Some scientists took beef (fairly) with this search, particularly because reward is used across disciplines in different fashions (think computer science) and because reward is both a verb and noun (while punishment is just a noun). To add a little more robustness, here is a similar search for 'altruism' and 'defection' that yields even more pronounced results (and more variable; check out Ingenta) in favor of academics favoring research related to reward more than punishment.
