Information Seeking in a Non-Hypothesis Testing Task

Abstract

The information gain model (Oaksford and Chater, Psychological Review 101, 608–631, 1994) advocates that participants attempt to achieve a larger expected information gain when they have to test an if-then rule or hypothesis. However, acquisition of larger expected information gain could also be operational when participants do not have to test a hypothesis. This study devised a new task to investigate whether participants would seek larger expected information gain when they were not required to test a hypothesis. The task required participants to select one out of two balance scales for weighing coins in order to detect an underweight coin. We discovered that participants more frequently selected the balance scale that provided smaller expected information gain. This finding suggests that the preference for larger expected information gain may not apply to non-hypothesis testing settings.