Novelty as a drive of human exploration in complex stochastic environments

What is it about?

How humans explore their environment to find sources of reward is a central question in neuroscience and psychology. We study human exploration of a complex environment with a stochastic region that mimics a “noisy-TV.” Our results show that participants who are optimistic about finding rewards continue to explore the stochastic part even when exploration is unhelpful. We show that novelty-seeking best explains this behavior.

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Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our work provides an accurate account of human exploration, suggesting that optimism about finding greater rewards governs the interplay between novelty and extrinsic incentives. These findings may help explain real-world behaviors, as diverse as social media overuse or analysis paralysis, where people continue to explore despite diminishing returns or increasing costs.