Humans actively sample evidence to support prior beliefs
- University of Oxford, United Kingdom
- University College London, United Kingdom
- Rutgers University, United States
- Princeton University, United States
Abstract
No one likes to be wrong. Previous research has shown that participants may underweight information incompatible with previous choices, a phenomenon called confirmation bias. In this paper we argue that a similar bias exists in the way information is actively sought. We investigate how choice influences information gathering using a perceptual choice task and find that participants sample more information from a previously chosen alternative. Furthermore, the higher the confidence in the initial choice, the more biased information sampling becomes. As a consequence, when faced with the possibility of revising an earlier decision, participants are more likely to stick with their original choice, even when incorrect. Critically, we show that agency controls this phenomenon. The effect disappears in a fixed sampling condition where presentation of evidence is controlled by the experimenter, suggesting that the way in which confirmatory evidence is acquired critically impacts the decision process. These results suggest active information acquisition plays a critical role in the propagation of strongly held beliefs over time.
Data availability
All data is available on the lab GitHub page (https://github.com/BDMLab).
Article and author information
Author details
Pradyumna Sepulveda
Benedetto De Martino
Funding
Wellcome Trust (Henry Dale Fellowship)
- Benedetto De Martino
Royal Society (Henry Dale Fellowship)
- Benedetto De Martino
Chilean National Agency for Research and Development (Scholarship)
- Pradyumna Sepulveda
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Reviewing Editor
- Valentin Wyart, École normale supérieure, PSL University, INSERM, France
Ethics
Human subjects: All participants signed a consent form and both studies were done following the approval given by the University of Cambridge, Cambridge Psychology Research Ethics Committee (PRE.2015.095).
Version history
- Received: June 29, 2021
- Preprint posted: June 30, 2021 (view preprint)
- Accepted: April 8, 2022
- Accepted Manuscript published: April 11, 2022 (version 1)
- Version of Record published: April 25, 2022 (version 2)
- Version of Record updated: June 28, 2022 (version 3)
Copyright
© 2022, Kaanders et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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Humans actively sample evidence to support prior beliefs
eLife 11:e71768.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.71768
Further reading
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- Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
- Neuroscience
In most mammals, conspecific chemosensory communication relies on semiochemical release within complex bodily secretions and subsequent stimulus detection by the vomeronasal organ (VNO). Urine, a rich source of ethologically relevant chemosignals, conveys detailed information about sex, social hierarchy, health, and reproductive state, which becomes accessible to a conspecific via vomeronasal sampling. So far, however, numerous aspects of social chemosignaling along the vomeronasal pathway remain unclear. Moreover, since virtually all research on vomeronasal physiology is based on secretions derived from inbred laboratory mice, it remains uncertain whether such stimuli provide a true representation of potentially more relevant cues found in the wild. Here, we combine a robust low-noise VNO activity assay with comparative molecular profiling of sex- and strain-specific mouse urine samples from two inbred laboratory strains as well as from wild mice. With comprehensive molecular portraits of these secretions, VNO activity analysis now enables us to (i) assess whether and, if so, how much sex/strain-selective ‘raw’ chemical information in urine is accessible via vomeronasal sampling; (ii) identify which chemicals exhibit sufficient discriminatory power to signal an animal’s sex, strain, or both; (iii) determine the extent to which wild mouse secretions are unique; and (iv) analyze whether vomeronasal response profiles differ between strains. We report both sex- and, in particular, strain-selective VNO representations of chemical information. Within the urinary ‘secretome’, both volatile compounds and proteins exhibit sufficient discriminative power to provide sex- and strain-specific molecular fingerprints. While total protein amount is substantially enriched in male urine, females secrete a larger variety at overall comparatively low concentrations. Surprisingly, the molecular spectrum of wild mouse urine does not dramatically exceed that of inbred strains. Finally, vomeronasal response profiles differ between C57BL/6 and BALB/c animals, with particularly disparate representations of female semiochemicals.
