The Effect of Non-Instrumental Information on Reward Learning

Abstract

Many investigations of information-seeking highlight a tendency to forgo financial reward in return for advance information that cannot be used to change future outcomes. Most of these experiments use tasks in which reward contingencies are described to participants. The use of such descriptions leaves open the question of whether the opportunity to obtain such non-instrumental information influences people’s ability to learn and represent the underlying reward structure of an experimental environment. In two experiments, participants completed a two-armed bandit task with monetary incentives in which reward contingencies were learned via trial-by-trial experience. We find, akin to description-based tasks, that participants are willing to forgo financial reward to receive information about a delayed, unchangeable outcome. Crucially, however, there is little evidence this willingness to pay for information is driven by an inaccurate representation of the reward structure: participants’ representations approximated the underlying reward structure regardless of the presence of advance non-instrumental information. The results extend previous conclusions regarding the intrinsic value of information to an experience-based domain and highlight challenges of probing participants’ memories for experienced rewards.