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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Dec 13, 2025

The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies

The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies

Published on: August 25, 2023

Information about action outcomes differentially affects learning from self-determined versus imposed choices.

Valérian Chambon¹, Héloïse Théro², Marie Vidal^3,4

¹Institut Jean Nicod, Département d'Études Cognitives, École Normale Supérieure, EHESS, CNRS, PSL University, Paris, France. valerian.chambon@gmail.com.

Nature Human Behaviour

|August 5, 2020

Summary

Humans exhibit a learning bias, overweighting good news over bad news. This confirmation bias in learning rates primarily affects free choices, not forced ones, and appears adaptive for efficient learning.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive psychology
Neuroscience
Decision-making

Background:

Information valence, particularly positive vs. negative outcomes, influences human learning.
Previous research suggests a potential bias in how individuals learn from new information.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the confirmation bias in learning rates.
To examine how choice type (free vs. forced), outcome reward (low vs. high), and motor requirements (go vs. no-go) affect this bias.

Main Methods:

Four experiments were conducted with systematic manipulation of choice source, outcome contingencies, and motor requirements.
Model-estimated learning rates were analyzed to quantify the learning bias.

Main Results:

A confirmation bias in learning rates was observed, specifically in free choices.
This bias was independent of outcome contingencies and motor requirements, suggesting it operates in decision representation.
Model simulations indicated that this bias optimizes performance in varying reward environments.

Conclusions:

The choice-confirmation bias appears adaptive for efficient learning of action-outcome contingencies.
This bias may play a role in optimizing decision-making beyond personal dispositional factors.