Fig. 4: Association between information seeking and mental health is robust to replication.

Plotted on the y-axis is the average psychopathology scores across the three dimensions, 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), averaged across the two time points. 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 for 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 = 0.034, two sided), while we observed no effect of Instrumental Utility (p = 0.200, two sided) or Hedonic Utility (p = 0.063, two sided). Error bars SEM. *P < 0.05 (two sided). N = 124 participants. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.