Strength of Belief Guides Information Foraging

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Information Science
• Decision Making

Background:

• Information-seeking theories assume beliefs influence perceived information value.
• Pre-search belief updating's impact on information foraging is understudied.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how pre-search belief updating affects the perceived value of information sources.
• To examine the principle of hypothesis-guided search in information foraging.

Main Methods:

• College students performed a medical diagnosis task.
• Medical tests had equal objective value before a symptom altered disease hypothesis belief strength.

Main Results:

• Belief changes systematically altered information source preferences.
• This supports the principle of hypothesis-guided search.

Conclusions:

• Pre-search belief updating is a key driver of information foraging behavior.
• Hypothesis-guided search influences information seeking and evaluation.