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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...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pierson, Emma, Goodman, Noah
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
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.
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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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