ArticleCognition2015
Reward and punishment act as distinct factors in guiding behavior.
Article in Cognition, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 115 citations in OpenAlex.
- A systematic review and meta-analysis finds that psychological well-being predicts all-cause mortality independently of psychological ill-being.BMC public health · 2026Pooled it
- The functional neural architecture of dysfunctional reward processing in autism.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2021Pooled it
- A single dose of escitalopram blunts the neural response in the thalamus and caudate during monetary loss.Journal of psychiatry & neuroscience : JPN · 2021Trial
- Recover or discover: How outcome feedback shapes response patterns within game spaces.NPJ science of learning · 2026Article
- Lower reward sensitivity in frontostriatal stroke: Influence of depression and resting-state functional connectivity.Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- Dissociable Neural Connectome Mapping of Reward and Punishment Responsiveness in Young Adults: Associations with Genetic Variability and Neurotransmitter Profiles.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Differential discounting of past and future gains and losses in individuals in recovery from substance use disorder.Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology · 2025Article
- Don't Give-Up: Why some intervention schemes encourage suboptimal behavior.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Article
- Sensorimotor faculties bias choice behavior.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Flexible control of representational dynamics in a disinhibition-based model of decision-making.eLife · 2023Article
- Error-related signaling in nucleus accumbens D2 receptor-expressing neurons guides inhibition-based choice behavior in mice.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Primary rewards and aversive outcomes have comparable effects on attentional bias.Behavioral neuroscience · 2023Article
- Decision-making style explains the withdrawal behavior of shy individuals: evidence from Chinese college students.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- Serotonin modulates asymmetric learning from reward and punishment in healthy human volunteers.Communications biology · 2022Article
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- Contributions of gains and losses to attentional capture and disengagement: evidence from the gap paradigm.Experimental brain research · 2021Article
- A micro-genesis account of longer-form reinforcement learning in structured and unstructured environments.NPJ science of learning · 2021Article
- Variability in competitive decision-making speed and quality against exploiting and exploitative opponents.Scientific reports · 2021Observational
- A new protocol for monitoring operational outcomes of environmental management in commercial forestry plantations.Journal of environmental management · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Behavior rests on the experience of reinforcement and punishment. It has been unclear whether reinforcement and punishment act as oppositely valenced components of a single behavioral factor, or whether these two kinds of outcomes play fundamentally distinct behavioral roles. To this end, we varied the magnitude of a reward or a penalty experienced following a choice using monetary tokens. The outcome of each trial was independent of the outcome of the previous trial, which enabled us to isolate and study the effect on behavior of each outcome magnitude in single trials. We found that a reward led to a repetition of the previous choice, whereas a penalty led to an avoidance of the previous choice. Surprisingly, the effects of the reward magnitude and the penalty magnitude revealed a pronounced asymmetry. The choice repetition effect of a reward scaled with the magnitude of the reward. In a marked contrast, the avoidance effect of a penalty was flat, not influenced by the magnitude of the penalty. These effects were mechanistically described using a reinforcement learning model after the model was updated to account for the penalty-based asymmetry. The asymmetry in the effects of the reward magnitude and the punishment magnitude was so striking that it is difficult to conceive that one factor is just a weighted or transformed form of the other factor. Instead, the data suggest that rewards and penalties are fundamentally distinct factors in governing behavior.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.