The Value of Non-Instrumental Information in Anxiety: Insights from a Resource-Rational Model of Planning

Anxiety is intimately related to the desire for information and, under some accounts, thought to arise from the intolerance of uncertainty. Here, we seek to test this hypothesis by studying the relationship between trait anxiety and the willingness to pay for non-instrumental information (i.e., information that reveals whether an event will happen but cannot be used to change the outcome). We model behavior with a resource-rational model of planning, according to which non-instrumental information is useful for planning ahead, but paying for this information only makes sense if the anticipated benefits of planning outweigh the cognitive and financial costs. We find a bidirectional effect of trait anxiety factors on information seeking behavior: those with high trait somatic anxiety exhibit a stronger preference for non-instrumental information, whereas those with high trait negative affect exhibit a weaker preference. By fitting the resource-rational model, we find that this divergent desire for information arises from the utility of obtaining information for future planning (increased in somatic anxiety, decreased in negative affect). Our findings lend support to the intolerance of uncertainty hypothesis in somatic anxiety and highlight the importance of studying anxiety as a multifactorial construct.