Unravelling the motivations to wisely seek information

Each day, 60% of the world’s population engages in online information consumption, often encountering negative content. For example, social media contains three times more negative than positive information. This exposure to negative information has been linked to adverse effects on people’s well-being and mental health. For example, persistent engagement with negative online content, often termed ‘doomscrolling’, heightens the risk of psychopathological conditions. This is an issue for both individuals grappling with deteriorating mental health and governments contending with such a decline. WiseSeek aims to confront this challenge by developing an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the mechanisms underlying decisions to consume information with such negative consequences, referred to as doom information consumption. First, I propose a new hypothesis that doom information consumption arises as a result of altered reinforcement learning dynamics within the value of information, and I introduce a novel computational model to test this. Second, I hypothesize that the neurotransmitter dopamine (DA) plays a key role in computing such a value to guide information consumption. I will test this hypothesis using an innovative methodology that measures subsecond fluctuations in DA signals in conscious humans and pharmacological interventions. Third, I will test whether attention-based interventions can interfere with how the value of information is computed to change information consumption. Finally, lab findings will be translated to the real world by developing a novel web-based methodology. Laying at the frontiers of cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and computer science, WiseSeek will provide the first insights into the mechanisms underlying decisions to consume information with negative consequences on people’s well-being and mental health, with major implications for behavioral science, clinical psychology, public policy, and society as a whole.