Fig. 2: Information seeking related to psychopathology.

a Plotted are the weights (based on ref. ³⁰) given to each questionnaire item^{21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29} when calculating the weighted score for each participant on each of the three psychopathology dimensions identified previously (“Anxious-Depression”, “Social-Withdrawal” and “Compulsive-Behaviour and Intrusive Thought”). b Plotted on the y-axis is the average psychopathology score across the three dimensions described in a, Z-scored. On the x-axis are the weights assigned to each information-seeking motive from a linear regression predicting information seeking from Instrumental Utility (green), Hedonic Utility (red) and Cognitive Utility (blue). Dots represent individual participants. Shading represents confidence interval. Line represents the relationship between the abscissa and ordinate controlling for the effect of the other two motives as well as of age and gender. As can be observed, participants who placed a large positive weight on Cognitive Utility when seeking information reported less psychopathology symptoms (p = 0.016, two sided), while we observed no effect of Instrumental Utility (p = 0.094, two sided) or Hedonic Utility (p = 0.870, two sided). Error bars SEM. *P < 0.05 (two sided). N = 71 participants. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.