Theoretical Mechanisms of Paradoxical Choices Involving Information

[摘要] Humans and other animals often make decisions in conditions of uncertainty. Choosing an optionthat provides information and reduces uncertainty can often improve decision making. Yet, in decision-making tasks, animals such as pigeons, starlings, rats, and humans often choose information evenwhen it cannot be used. A review of the behavioral contributions of such noninstrumental information ispresented here, starting from the observing response literature, and then focusing on research using theparadoxical (aka suboptimal) choice task. In the paradoxical choice procedure, animals choose betweentwo alternatives that differ in two main aspects: the information presented after each alternative and theoverall reinforcement following each alternative. The richer alternative is followed by one or two cuesthat are followed by food on half of the trials; this is called the noninformative (No-Info) alternative. Theleaner alternative is followed by one of two cues—one always followed by food and the other alwaysfollowed by no food. Thus, both cues are informative about whether reinforcement will be delivered onthat trial; this is called the informative alternative. Typically, animals develop a strong preference forthe informative (Info) alternative, thereby failing to maximize reward. We review the following factorsthat influence the strength of this paradoxical choice: response requirement, delay-to-reward; contiguitybetween choice and information; reinforcement rate, motivational and individual differences, degreesof information, and what is learned about the informative cues. Finally, we review some of the mostimportant models and their theoretical implications for the understanding of the phenomena.

[学科分类] 社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

[关键词] information;choice;suboptimal;paradoxical