When knowledge hurts: humans are willing to receive pain for obtaining non-instrumental information

Abstract

Humans and other animals value information that reduces uncertainty or leads to pleasurable anticipation, even if it cannot be used to gain tangible rewards or change outcomes. In exchange, they are willing to incur significant costs, sacrifice rewards or invest effort. We investigated whether human participants were also willing to endure pain—a highly salient and aversive cost—to obtain such information. Forty participants performed a computer-based task. On each trial, they observed a coin flip, with each side associated with different monetary rewards of varying magnitude. Participants could choose to endure a painful stimulus (low, moderate or high pain) to learn the outcome of the coin flip immediately. Importantly, regardless of their choice, winnings were always earned, rendering this information non-instrumental. Results showed that agents were willing to endure pain in exchange for information, with a lower likelihood of doing so as pain levels increased. Both higher average rewards and a larger variance between the two possible rewards independently increased the willingness to accept pain. Our results show that the intrinsic value of escaping uncertainty through non-instrumental information is sufficient to offset pain experiences, suggesting a shared mechanism through which these can be directly compared.

Exploration-exploitation mechanisms in recurrent neural networks and human learners in restless bandit problems

“…Importantly, this divergence between human and RNN mechanisms demonstrates that directed exploration is not required for human-level task performance. The observation of information seeking behavior (directed exploration) independent of reward maximization can be understood as “non-instrumental” information-seeking, which was shown in many human studies (Bennett et al, 2021; Bode et al, 2023; Brydevall et al, 2018). Our results further validate that for human learners, in contrast to RNN agents, information is intrinsically rewarding, independent of the accumulation of external reward(Bennett et al, 2016).…”

Do goldfish like to be informed?

“…Some experimental observations and theoretical models support the view that individuals may ascribe value to stimuli because they are informative, independent of associated instrumental utility (10)(11)(12)(13). In particular, in an experimental protocol often referred to as 'paradoxical choice', or 'non-instrumental information-seeking', humans (14)(15)(16)(17)(18) and subjects from other mammalian (19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24), and avian (25)(26)(27)(28)(29) species, seek information about forthcoming outcomes (i.e. food/no food), even though in the experimental protocols the information cannot be used to modify outcomes, and may come at considerable cost (see also "observing responses" 8).…”

The value of non-instrumental information in anxiety: insights from a resource-rational model of planning

“…At first glance, learning about an outcome in these scenarios can only reduce uncertainty (although we will shortly argue that there is more going on). It seems irrational to want to know whether an outcome will happen in these scenarios, yet people act on these desires, frequently choosing to pay money (Pierson and Goodman, 2014;Jiwa et al, 2021), sacrifice a proportion of future earnings (Bennett et al, 2016(Bennett et al, , 2020Brydevall et al, 2018), expend physical effort (Goh et al, 2021), and even endure pain (Bode et al, 2023) to gain noninstrumental information. These preferences are typically amplified by the degree of uncertainty reduction (Charpentier et al, 2018;Van Lieshout et al, 2018;Kobayashi et al, 2019;Sharot and Sunstein, 2020).…”