ArticleNature communications2023
Inefficient prioritization of task-relevant attributes during instrumental information demand.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 9 citations in OpenAlex.
- Why do we seek information about the future? On the origins of subjective value without instrumental value.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Modeling information demand in the framework of probabilistic reasoning.Communications psychology · 2026Article
- Curiosity shapes spatial exploration and cognitive map formation in humans.Communications psychology · 2024Article
- Individual differences in information demand have a low dimensional structure predicted by some curiosity traits.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Neural Representations of Sensory Uncertainty and Confidence Are Associated with Perceptual Curiosity.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2024Article
- Uncertainty modulates visual maps during noninstrumental information demand.Nature communications · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In natural settings, people evaluate complex multi-attribute situations and decide which attribute to request information about. Little is known about how people make this selection and specifically, how they identify individual observations that best predict the value of a multi-attribute situation. Here show that, in a simple task of information demand, participants inefficiently query attributes that have high individual value but are relatively uninformative about a total payoff. This inefficiency is robust in two instrumental conditions in which gathering less informative observations leads to significantly lower rewards. Across individuals, variations in the sensitivity to informativeness is associated with personality metrics, showing negative associations with extraversion and thrill seeking and positive associations with stress tolerance and need for cognition. Thus, people select informative queries using sub-optimal strategies that are associated with personality traits and influence consequential choices.
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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.