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Abstract
Seeking information when anxious may help reduce the aversive feeling of uncertainty and guide decision-making. If information is negative or confusing, however, this may increase anxiety further. Information gathered under anxiety can thus be beneficial and/or damaging. Here, we examine whether anxiety leads to a general increase in information-seeking, or rather to changes in the type of information and/or situations in which it is sought. In two controlled laboratory studies, we show that both trait anxiety and induced anxiety lead to a selective alteration in information-seeking. In particular, anxiety did not enhance the general tendency to seek information, nor did it alter the valence of the information gathered. Rather, anxiety amplified the tendency to seek information more in response to large changes in the environment. This was true even when the cause of the anxiety was not directly related to the information sought. As anxious individuals have been shown to have problems learning in changing environments, greater information-seeking in such environments may be an adaptive compensatory mechanism.
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1 California Institute of Technology, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences, Pasadena, USA (GRID:grid.20861.3d) (ISNI:0000000107068890); University College London, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, London, UK (GRID:grid.83440.3b) (ISNI:0000000121901201)
2 University College London, Department of Experimental Psychology, London, UK (GRID:grid.83440.3b) (ISNI:0000000121901201); University College London, The Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, London, UK (GRID:grid.83440.3b) (ISNI:0000000121901201); Ghent University, Department of Experimental Psychology, Ghent, Belgium (GRID:grid.5342.0) (ISNI:0000 0001 2069 7798)
3 University College London, Department of Experimental Psychology, London, UK (GRID:grid.83440.3b) (ISNI:0000000121901201); University College London, The Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, London, UK (GRID:grid.83440.3b) (ISNI:0000000121901201)
4 University of Bonn, Division of Medical Psychology, Bonn, Germany (GRID:grid.10388.32) (ISNI:0000 0001 2240 3300)
5 University College London, Department of Experimental Psychology, London, UK (GRID:grid.83440.3b) (ISNI:0000000121901201); University College London, The Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research, London, UK (GRID:grid.83440.3b) (ISNI:0000000121901201); Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, USA (GRID:grid.116068.8) (ISNI:0000 0001 2341 2786)