On the Effect of Practice on Exploration and Exploitation of Options and Strategies

Insufficient exploration of one’s surroundings is at the root of many real-life problems, as demonstrated by many famous biases (e.g., the status quo bias, learned helplessness). The current work focuses on the emergence of this phenomenon at the strategy level: the tendency to under-explore the set...

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Autores principales:	Doron Cohen, Kinneret Teodorescu
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:	exploration and exploitation practice decisions from experience Ill-structured problem strategies inertia Psychology BF1-990
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/063ad973ea1d4457aae76a042d23503b
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:063ad973ea1d4457aae76a042d23503b2021-11-12T04:25:36ZOn the Effect of Practice on Exploration and Exploitation of Options and Strategies1664-107810.3389/fpsyg.2021.725690https://doaj.org/article/063ad973ea1d4457aae76a042d23503b2021-11-01T00:00:00Zhttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.725690/fullhttps://doaj.org/toc/1664-1078Insufficient exploration of one’s surroundings is at the root of many real-life problems, as demonstrated by many famous biases (e.g., the status quo bias, learned helplessness). The current work focuses on the emergence of this phenomenon at the strategy level: the tendency to under-explore the set of available choice strategies. We demonstrate that insufficient exploration of strategies can also manifest as excessive exploration between options. In such cases, interventions aimed at improving choices by reducing the costs of exploration of options are likely to fail. In Study 1, participants faced an exploration task that implies an infinite number of choice strategies and a small sub-set of (near) optimal solutions. We manipulated the amount of practice participants underwent during the first, shorter game and compared their performance in a second, longer game with an identical payoff structure. Our results show that regardless of the amount of practice, participants in all experimental groups tended to under-explore the strategy space and relied on a specific strategy that implied over-exploration of the option space. That is, under-exploration of strategies was manifested as over-exploration of options. In Study 2, we added a constraint that, on a subset of practice trials, forced participants to exploit familiar options. This manipulation almost doubled the per-trial average outcome on the comparable longer second game. This suggests that forcing participants to experience the effects of different (underexplored) strategy components during practice can greatly increase the chance they make better choices later on.Doron CohenKinneret TeodorescuFrontiers Media S.A.articleexploration and exploitationpracticedecisions from experienceIll-structured problemstrategiesinertiaPsychologyBF1-990ENFrontiers in Psychology, Vol 12 (2021)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	exploration and exploitation practice decisions from experience Ill-structured problem strategies inertia Psychology BF1-990
spellingShingle	exploration and exploitation practice decisions from experience Ill-structured problem strategies inertia Psychology BF1-990 Doron Cohen Kinneret Teodorescu On the Effect of Practice on Exploration and Exploitation of Options and Strategies
description	Insufficient exploration of one’s surroundings is at the root of many real-life problems, as demonstrated by many famous biases (e.g., the status quo bias, learned helplessness). The current work focuses on the emergence of this phenomenon at the strategy level: the tendency to under-explore the set of available choice strategies. We demonstrate that insufficient exploration of strategies can also manifest as excessive exploration between options. In such cases, interventions aimed at improving choices by reducing the costs of exploration of options are likely to fail. In Study 1, participants faced an exploration task that implies an infinite number of choice strategies and a small sub-set of (near) optimal solutions. We manipulated the amount of practice participants underwent during the first, shorter game and compared their performance in a second, longer game with an identical payoff structure. Our results show that regardless of the amount of practice, participants in all experimental groups tended to under-explore the strategy space and relied on a specific strategy that implied over-exploration of the option space. That is, under-exploration of strategies was manifested as over-exploration of options. In Study 2, we added a constraint that, on a subset of practice trials, forced participants to exploit familiar options. This manipulation almost doubled the per-trial average outcome on the comparable longer second game. This suggests that forcing participants to experience the effects of different (underexplored) strategy components during practice can greatly increase the chance they make better choices later on.
format	article
author	Doron Cohen Kinneret Teodorescu
author_facet	Doron Cohen Kinneret Teodorescu
author_sort	Doron Cohen
title	On the Effect of Practice on Exploration and Exploitation of Options and Strategies
title_short	On the Effect of Practice on Exploration and Exploitation of Options and Strategies
title_full	On the Effect of Practice on Exploration and Exploitation of Options and Strategies
title_fullStr	On the Effect of Practice on Exploration and Exploitation of Options and Strategies
title_full_unstemmed	On the Effect of Practice on Exploration and Exploitation of Options and Strategies
title_sort	on the effect of practice on exploration and exploitation of options and strategies
publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate	2021
url	https://doaj.org/article/063ad973ea1d4457aae76a042d23503b
work_keys_str_mv	AT doroncohen ontheeffectofpracticeonexplorationandexploitationofoptionsandstrategies AT kinneretteodorescu ontheeffectofpracticeonexplorationandexploitationofoptionsandstrategies
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On the Effect of Practice on Exploration and Exploitation of Options and Strategies

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