Anxious and obsessive-compulsive traits are independently associated with valuation of noninstrumental information.

Abstract

Aversion to uncertainty about the future has been proposed as a transdiagnostic trait underlying psychiatric diagnoses including obsessive-compulsive disorder and generalized anxiety. This association might explain the frequency of pathological information-seeking behaviors such as compulsive checking and reassurance-seeking in these disorders. Here we tested the behavioral predictions of this model using a noninstrumental information-seeking task that measured preferences for unusable information about future outcomes in different payout domains (gain, loss, and mixed gain/loss). We administered this task, along with a targeted battery of self-report questionnaires, to a general-population sample of 146 adult participants. Using computational cognitive modeling of choices to test competing theories of information valuation, we found evidence for a model in which preferences for costless and costly information about future outcomes were independent, and in which information preference was modulated by both outcome mean and outcome variance. Critically, we also found positive associations between a model parameter controlling preference for costly information and individual differences in latent traits of both anxiety and obsessive-compulsion. These associations were invariant across different payout domains, providing evidence that individuals high in obsessive-compulsive and anxious traits show a generalized increase in willingness-to-pay for unusable information about uncertain future outcomes, even though this behavior reduces their expected future reward.

Why do people seek information? The role of personality traits and situation perception.

“…Given the prevalence of the uncertainty-reduction explanation of information seeking in the literature, and previous studies relating uncertainty intolerance or neuroticism to information seeking (Bennett et al, 2020;Jach & Smillie, 2021), we considered whether elements of our experimental design could provide an alternative explanation for these results. One possibility is related to the number of trials before participants are given the choice to seek information.…”

“…This information is non-instrumental as the participant's choice does not alter the total reward obtained at the end of the experiment. For example, in Bennett et al (2020), participants can choose to pay a small sum of money to view a series of stimuli that reveal whether they will win or lose the trial, or else pay no money and view perceptually equivalent stimuli providing no information about the outcome. Whatever their choice, they will learn the outcome at the end of the trial.…”

Why Do People Seek Information? The Role of Personality Traits and Situation Perception

“…Given the prevalence of the uncertainty-reduction explanation of information seeking in the literature, and previous studies relating uncertainty intolerance or neuroticism to information seeking (Bennett et al, 2020;Jach & Smillie, 2021), we considered whether elements of our experimental design could provide an alternative explanation for these results. One possibility is related to the number of trials before participants are given the choice to seek information.…”

“…This could suggest that uncertainty reduction-or, at least, anxiety-related uncertainty reduction-is not as strong a motivator for reward-outcome information seeking as has been previously proposed in the literature. Indeed, the few studies that have included uncertainty intolerance alongside information-seeking paradigms also found mixed evidence: for example, Bennett et al (2020) found an effect that fell short of significance after correcting for multiple comparisons, and Jach and Smillie (2021) found a significant correlation in Study 2, but not Study 1. If correct, this would necessitate altering or removing the safety pathway from our conceptual model.…”

The effect of uncertainty and outcome probability on non-instrumental information seeking

“…Such work might also assess whether individual participants have stable traits which can be probed by questionnaires (other than the IUS, that we tried here) which might account for the observed heterogeneity in information preferences (see right panel of Figure 2 and bottom panels of Figure 5). For example, Bennett et al (2020) found both anxiety and obsessive-compulsive traits to be associated with non-instrumental information seeking, and Ho, Hagmann, and Loewenstein (2021) have developed a scale specifically designed to measure people's desire or aversion to potentially unpleasant information about future events.…”