I think social punishments usually have the same form. Where rewards tend to be more of a transfer of status, and punishments more of a destruction of status (two people can destroy each others reputation with repeated social punishments).
There is also the bandwidth cost of punishment, as well as the simple fact that giving people praise usually comes with a positive emotional component for the receiver (in addition to the status and the reputation), whereas punishments usually come with an addition of stress and discomfort that reduces total output for a while.
In either case, I think the simpler case is made by simply looking at the assumption of diminishing returns in resources and realizing that the cost of giving someone a reward they care 2x about is usually larger than the cost of giving the reward twice, meaning that there is an inherent cost to high-variance reward landscapes.
I think social punishments usually have the same form. Where rewards tend to be more of a transfer of status, and punishments more of a destruction of status (two people can destroy each others reputation with repeated social punishments).
There is also the bandwidth cost of punishment, as well as the simple fact that giving people praise usually comes with a positive emotional component for the receiver (in addition to the status and the reputation), whereas punishments usually come with an addition of stress and discomfort that reduces total output for a while.
In either case, I think the simpler case is made by simply looking at the assumption of diminishing returns in resources and realizing that the cost of giving someone a reward they care 2x about is usually larger than the cost of giving the reward twice, meaning that there is an inherent cost to high-variance reward landscapes.