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Internality and the internalisation of failure: Evidence from a novel task

A critical facet of adjusting one’s behaviour after succeeding or failing at a task is assigning responsibility for the ultimate outcome. Humans have trait- and state-like tendencies to implicate aspects of their own behaviour (called ‘internal’ ascriptions) or facets of the particular task or Lady...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Mancinelli, Federico, Roiser, Jonathan, Dayan, Peter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8284820/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34228706
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009134
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author Mancinelli, Federico
Roiser, Jonathan
Dayan, Peter
author_facet Mancinelli, Federico
Roiser, Jonathan
Dayan, Peter
author_sort Mancinelli, Federico
collection PubMed
description A critical facet of adjusting one’s behaviour after succeeding or failing at a task is assigning responsibility for the ultimate outcome. Humans have trait- and state-like tendencies to implicate aspects of their own behaviour (called ‘internal’ ascriptions) or facets of the particular task or Lady Luck (’chance’). However, how these tendencies interact with actual performance is unclear. We designed a novel task in which subjects had to learn the likelihood of achieving their goals, and the extent to which this depended on their efforts. High internality (Levenson I-score) was associated with decision making patterns that are less vulnerable to failure. Our computational analyses suggested that this depended heavily on the adjustment in the perceived achievability of riskier goals following failure. We found beliefs about chance not to be explanatory of choice behaviour in our task. Beliefs about powerful others were strong predictors of behaviour, but only when subjects lacked substantial influence over the outcome. Our results provide an evidentiary basis for heuristics and learning differences that underlie the formation and maintenance of control expectations by the self.
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spelling pubmed-82848202021-07-28 Internality and the internalisation of failure: Evidence from a novel task Mancinelli, Federico Roiser, Jonathan Dayan, Peter PLoS Comput Biol Research Article A critical facet of adjusting one’s behaviour after succeeding or failing at a task is assigning responsibility for the ultimate outcome. Humans have trait- and state-like tendencies to implicate aspects of their own behaviour (called ‘internal’ ascriptions) or facets of the particular task or Lady Luck (’chance’). However, how these tendencies interact with actual performance is unclear. We designed a novel task in which subjects had to learn the likelihood of achieving their goals, and the extent to which this depended on their efforts. High internality (Levenson I-score) was associated with decision making patterns that are less vulnerable to failure. Our computational analyses suggested that this depended heavily on the adjustment in the perceived achievability of riskier goals following failure. We found beliefs about chance not to be explanatory of choice behaviour in our task. Beliefs about powerful others were strong predictors of behaviour, but only when subjects lacked substantial influence over the outcome. Our results provide an evidentiary basis for heuristics and learning differences that underlie the formation and maintenance of control expectations by the self. Public Library of Science 2021-07-06 /pmc/articles/PMC8284820/ /pubmed/34228706 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009134 Text en © 2021 Mancinelli et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Mancinelli, Federico
Roiser, Jonathan
Dayan, Peter
Internality and the internalisation of failure: Evidence from a novel task
title Internality and the internalisation of failure: Evidence from a novel task
title_full Internality and the internalisation of failure: Evidence from a novel task
title_fullStr Internality and the internalisation of failure: Evidence from a novel task
title_full_unstemmed Internality and the internalisation of failure: Evidence from a novel task
title_short Internality and the internalisation of failure: Evidence from a novel task
title_sort internality and the internalisation of failure: evidence from a novel task
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8284820/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34228706
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1009134
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