Fig. 6: Information-seeking motives in the health domain.

a Plotted are the beta coefficients from a linear mixed-effects model (two sided; N = 116 participants), showing that participants’ desire to receive health related information was greater when the Instrumental Utility (p = 0.0001, two sided), Hedonic Utility (p = 0.0001, two sided) and Cognitive Utility (p = 0.0001, two sided) of information were higher. These were estimated respectively by participants’ ratings of how useful the information would be, how they would feel to know vs not to know, and how frequently they think about the stimulus. The horizontal lines indicate median values, boxes indicate 25–75% interquartile range and whiskers indicate 1.5 × interquartile range; individual scores are shown as dots. b BIC scores reveal that the model described in a fit the data better than models including alternate combinations of the utilities and also those including participants’ confidence regarding what the information would reveal. The same was true when examining AIC scores (see Supplementary Table 8). Smaller BIC and AIC scores indicate better fit. c Plotted are the weights each individual put on each motive when seeking information in the health domain. Beta coefficients of Instrumental Utility are on the x-axis, of Cognitive Utility on the y-axis and of Hedonic Utility on the z-axis. Green dots represent participants who put the largest weight on Instrumental Utility when seeking information. Red dots represent participants who put the largest weight on Hedonic Utility when seeking information. Blue dots represent participants who put the largest weight on Cognitive Utility when seeking information. The colour gradient represents how dominant the largest weight was in comparison to the other two weights. Individuals who put more than twice as much weight on their dominant utility than the other two utilities are represented in darkest colours. Those whose dominant utility was less than 1.25 times larger than the other two are represented in the lightest colours. ***P < 0.001, **P < 0.01 (two sided). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.