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Uncertainty and Denial: A Resource-Rational Model of the Value of Information
Classical decision theory predicts that people should be indifferent to information that is not useful for making decisions, but this model often fails to describe human behavior. Here we investigate one such scenario, where people desire information about whether an event (the gain/loss of money) w...
Autores principales: | , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2014
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4245129/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25426631 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113342 |
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author | Pierson, Emma Goodman, Noah |
author_facet | Pierson, Emma Goodman, Noah |
author_sort | Pierson, Emma |
collection | PubMed |
description | Classical decision theory predicts that people should be indifferent to information that is not useful for making decisions, but this model often fails to describe human behavior. Here we investigate one such scenario, where people desire information about whether an event (the gain/loss of money) will occur even though there is no obvious decision to be made on the basis of this information. We find a curious dual trend: if information is costless, as the probability of the event increases people want the information more; if information is not costless, people's desire for the information peaks at an intermediate probability. People also want information more as the importance of the event increases, and less as the cost of the information increases. We propose a model that explains these results, based on the assumption that people have limited cognitive resources and obtain information about which events will occur so they can determine whether to expend effort planning for them. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4245129 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2014 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-42451292014-12-05 Uncertainty and Denial: A Resource-Rational Model of the Value of Information Pierson, Emma Goodman, Noah PLoS One Research Article Classical decision theory predicts that people should be indifferent to information that is not useful for making decisions, but this model often fails to describe human behavior. Here we investigate one such scenario, where people desire information about whether an event (the gain/loss of money) will occur even though there is no obvious decision to be made on the basis of this information. We find a curious dual trend: if information is costless, as the probability of the event increases people want the information more; if information is not costless, people's desire for the information peaks at an intermediate probability. People also want information more as the importance of the event increases, and less as the cost of the information increases. We propose a model that explains these results, based on the assumption that people have limited cognitive resources and obtain information about which events will occur so they can determine whether to expend effort planning for them. Public Library of Science 2014-11-26 /pmc/articles/PMC4245129/ /pubmed/25426631 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113342 Text en © 2014 Pierson, Goodman http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Pierson, Emma Goodman, Noah Uncertainty and Denial: A Resource-Rational Model of the Value of Information |
title | Uncertainty and Denial: A Resource-Rational Model of the Value of Information |
title_full | Uncertainty and Denial: A Resource-Rational Model of the Value of Information |
title_fullStr | Uncertainty and Denial: A Resource-Rational Model of the Value of Information |
title_full_unstemmed | Uncertainty and Denial: A Resource-Rational Model of the Value of Information |
title_short | Uncertainty and Denial: A Resource-Rational Model of the Value of Information |
title_sort | uncertainty and denial: a resource-rational model of the value of information |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4245129/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25426631 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0113342 |
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