Observational studyNature communications2021
Individual differences in information-seeking.
Observational study in Nature communications, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 41 papers, 1 of them a synthesis 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
41 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Prevalence and predictors of medical information avoidance: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · 2025Pooled it
- External incentives change the relation between confidence and epistemic curiosity.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2026Article
- Distinct motivational factors shape news-seeking in young adults.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Decision-making trades off learned and perceived information.PNAS nexus · 2026Article
- Exerting effort for non-instrumental information under risk.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Understanding the treatment journey and experiences of knee osteoarthritis patients receiving standard care in Singapore: a qualitative study.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Modeling information demand in the framework of probabilistic reasoning.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- The impact of social media use on college students' mental health: a narrative review.Frontiers in public health · 2026Review
- Decision-making trades off learned and perceived information.Research square · 2025Article
- How the self-concept structures social role learning: insights from computational models.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Active information sampling in health and disease.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Review
- Knowledge of UK Residents About Importing Puppies from EU Countries.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2025Article
- Message source effects on rejection and costly punishment of criticism across cultures.Communications psychology · 2025Article
- Biased information-seeking and information-integration in social anxiety.Current opinion in psychology · 2025Review
- Information seeking and the expected utility of information about COVID-19 can be associated with uncertainty and related attitudes.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Article
- Latent profiles of digital health literacy and perceived stigma in burn patients: a cross-sectional study.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Adapting temporal preference to scarcity: A role for emotion?Journal of risk and uncertainty · 2025Article
- Web-browsing patterns reflect and shape mood and mental health.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Fluctuations in Sequential Many-Alternative Decisions Reveal Strategies Beyond Immediate Reward Maximisation.Journal of cognition · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Vast amounts of personalized information are now available to individuals. A vital research challenge is to establish how people decide what information they wish to obtain. Here, over five studies examining information-seeking in different domains we show that information-seeking is associated with three diverse motives. Specifically, we find that participants assess whether information is useful in directing action, how it will make them feel, and whether it relates to concepts they think of often. We demonstrate that participants integrate these assessments into a calculation of the value of information that explains information seeking or its avoidance. Different individuals assign different weights to these three factors when seeking information. Using a longitudinal approach, we find that the relative weights assigned to these information-seeking motives within an individual show stability over time, and are related to mental health as assessed using a battery of psychopathology questionnaires.
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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.