Human exploration strategically balances approaching and avoiding uncertainty.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Decision Science
• Computational Neuroscience

Background:

• Exploration aims to reduce uncertainty, yet humans sometimes avoid it.
• Conflicting tendencies to approach and avoid uncertainty require reconciliation in understanding exploration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how humans balance approaching and avoiding uncertainty during exploration.
• To test the hypothesis that capacity constraints influence this balance.

Main Methods:

• Developed a novel active exploration task.
• Used computational modeling to compare human choices against theoretical policies.
• Participants learned environment statistics by choosing to explore known or unknown options.

Main Results:

• Participants generally approached uncertainty by exploring lesser-known options.
• When overall environmental uncertainty was highest, participants avoided uncertainty, choosing better-known options.
• This uncertainty-avoiding strategy led to faster decisions without impairing learning.

Conclusions:

• Human exploration balances approaching and avoiding uncertainty based on overall uncertainty levels.
• This balancing act is a resource-rational strategy to manage cognitive costs during exploration.