Why uncertainty makes us change our behavior -- even when we shouldn't


Date:
July 29, 2021
Source:
University of New South Wales
Summary:
'Panic buying' might be a normal human response to uncertainty
after all, new research suggests.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== People around the world dramatically changed their shopping behaviours
at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.


========================================================================== Faced with new uncertainty, shoppers began stocking up on basic household
items -- especially toilet paper -- to account for the new unknown. This
buying frenzy led to shortages, even though, in most cases, there would
have been enough to go around if people only purchased what they needed.

According to a study led by UNSW Sydney, reactive behaviour like this
isn't unusual, but a common way to handle unexpected uncertainty.

In fact, unexpected uncertainty is such a powerful motivator for change
that it often prompts us to adjust our behaviour -- even when it's not
good for us.

"When people experience an unexpected change in their environment, they
start looking for ways to lessen that uncertainty," says lead author of
the study Dr Adrian Walker, who completed this research as part of his
PhD in psychology at UNSW Science. "They can change their behaviour and decision-making strategies to try and find a way to regain some sense
of control.

"Surprisingly, our study found that unexpected uncertainty caused
people to change their behaviours even when they would have been better
off sticking to an old strategy." The behavioural study, recently
published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory,
and Cognition, is the first to show the type of uncertainty we experience
-- that is, whether it is expected or unexpected - - plays a key role
in our reaction.



==========================================================================
For example, a city worker who knows their morning commute takes anywhere
from 30 to 50 minutes wouldn't be surprised by a 50-minute trip. On the
other hand, a country driver would be very surprised if their predictable 30-minute trip suddenly took 50 minutes.

To test how people respond to unexpected change, the researchers tasked
study participants with selling a pair of objects to one of two subjects
-- in this scenario, aliens -- in a virtual simulation. Their task was
simple: get as many points (or 'alien dollars') as possible.

Participants needed to choose which alien to sell a pair of chemicals
to, but only one of the chemicals determined how much the alien would
pay. They needed to work out which chemical and alien combination would
earn them the greatest rewards.

An initial group of 35 participants were familiarised with the task and
quickly learnt that one strategy (say, Option A) gave the better offer
of 15 points.

But midway through the experiment, the reward pattern changed, and Option
A now gave a random number between 8 and 22 points.

"As soon as we added an element of uncertainty, the participants started looking for new ways to complete the task," says Dr Walker. "The kicker
is that in all cases, the best thing they could do was use their old
strategy." Dr Walker says the pandemic -- and our different responses
to it -- is a large- scale example of unexpected uncertainty.



========================================================================== "Everything changed very suddenly at the start of COVID-19," he says.

"Many of us were suddenly all working from home, changing how we shop,
and changing how we socialise. The rules we were living by beforehand no
longer applied, and there was -- and still is -- no clear answer about
when or how the pandemic will end.

"Different people tried all sorts of things -- like panic shopping --
to reduce this new uncertainty and return to 'normal'. But as we've
seen, not all of these reactive strategies were good in the long run."
Boiling frog syndrome While unexpected uncertainty led to dramatic
responses, expected uncertainty had the opposite effect.

During the second phase of the trial, the researchers
introduced uncertainty in a gradual way to a different group of 35 participants. Option A's usual 15 points changed to 14-16 points, then
13-17 points, until the uncertainty rose to 8-22 points.

"The participants' behaviour didn't change dramatically, even though
the uncertainty eventually reached the same levels as in the first
experiment," says Dr Walker.

"When uncertainty was introduced gradually, people were able to maintain
their old strategies." While this specific experiment was designed for
the original strategy to be the most beneficial, Dr Walker says other
research has shown the harm in not changing behaviour when faced with
gradual change.

"We can see this pattern in a lot of real-world challenges, like the
climate change crisis," says Dr Walker.

"When change is slow and barely noticeable, there's no sudden prompt to
change our behaviour, and so we hold to old behaviours.

"Trying to get action on climate change is a lot like the boiling
frog fable.

If you put a frog in a pot and boil the water, it won't notice the
threat because the water is warming gradually. When it finally notices,
it is too late to jump out." Professor Ben Newell, the Deputy Head of
UNSW School of Psychology, was one of the researchers involved in the
project. He says an important next step in this research is translating insights about how people react to uncertainty in the lab to engaging
people in climate action.

"If we can identify the triggers for exploring new alternatives, then
we might overcome the inertia inherent in developing new, sustainable behaviours," says Prof. Newell.

Being certain about uncertainty Uncertainty is something humans face
every day, whether it's how bad traffic will be or what questions might
be asked in an exam.

But the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a new layer of uncertainty to major
areas of our lives, like career, health, and living circumstances.

"While this study isn't the whole picture for human behaviour during the pandemic, it can help explain why so many people looked for new ways to
add certainty to their lives," says Dr Walker, who is now a researcher
in the School of Psychiatry at UNSW Medicine & Health.

Co-author Dr Tom Beesley, formerly of UNSW and now based at Lancaster University, says "Dr Walker's work really helps us understand how people develop a representation of the uncertainty they are facing, and how
they might cope, or not cope, with that.

"My lab is trying to formalise this relationship in a computational
model of behaviour, so that we can make clearer predictions about what
we might expect to happen under different conditions of uncertainty."
While Dr Walker's research is now focused on psychiatric epidemiology,
he is interested to see where future research in this area goes --
especially in predicting individual responses to uncertainty.

"Given how many decisions we make under uncertainty in our everyday
lives, the more we can understand about how these decisions are made,
the more we hope to enable people to make good decisions," says Dr Walker.

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by
University_of_New_South_Wales. Original written by Sherry Landow. Note:
Content may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Adrian R. Walker, Danielle J. Navarro, Ben R. Newell, Tom Beesley.

Protection from uncertainty in the exploration/exploitation
trade-off..

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition,
2021; DOI: 10.1037/xlm0000883 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/07/210729183638.htm

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