The effect of apathy and compulsivity on planning and stopping in sequential decision-making

Real-life decision-making often comprises sequences of successive decisions about whether to take opportunities as they are encountered or keep searching for better ones instead. We investigated individual differences related to such sequential decision-making and link them especially to apathy and...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	PLoS biology 2022-03, Vol.20 (3), p.e3001566-e3001566
Main Authors:	Scholl, Jacqueline, Trier, Hailey A, Rushworth, Matthew F S, Kolling, Nils
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Apathy Bias Biology and Life Sciences Cognitive ability Costs Decision Making Decision trees Emotional behavior Humans Life Sciences Medicine and Health Sciences Metacognition Misalignment Neurons and Cognition Physical Sciences Planning Preregistered Psychology and behavior Questionnaires Research and Analysis Methods Searching Social Sciences
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Summary:	Real-life decision-making often comprises sequences of successive decisions about whether to take opportunities as they are encountered or keep searching for better ones instead. We investigated individual differences related to such sequential decision-making and link them especially to apathy and compulsivity in a large online sample (discovery sample: n = 449 and confirmation sample: n = 756). Our cognitive model revealed distinct changes in the way participants evaluated their environments and planned their own future behaviour. Apathy was linked to decision inertia, i.e., automatically persisting with a sequence of searches for longer than appropriate given the value of searching. Thus, despite being less motivated, they did not avoid the effort associated with longer searches. In contrast, compulsivity was linked to self-reported insensitivity to the cost of continuing with a sequence of searches. The objective measures of behavioural cost insensitivity were clearly linked to compulsivity only in the discovery sample. While the confirmation sample showed a similar effect, it did not reach significance. Nevertheless, in both samples, participants reported awareness of such bias (experienced as "overchasing"). In addition, this awareness made them report preemptively avoiding situations related to the bias. However, we found no evidence of them actually preempting more in the task, which might mean a misalignment of their metacognitive beliefs or that our behavioural measures were incomplete. In summary, individual variation in distinct, fundamental aspects of sequential decision-making can be linked to variation in 2 measures of behavioural traits associated with psychological illness in the normal population.
ISSN:	1545-7885 1544-9173 1545-7885