Nature Communications · 10 August 2026 · From issue 19
People automatically assign value to useless details, hurting their choices even when warned.
Ido Ben-Artzi, Maayan Pereg et al., Automatic value learning results in counterproductive human behavior, Nature Communications.
People keep learning value from things that do not matter, even when they know better. In several lab experiments with more than 1,200 people total, people kept treating random features, like hand movements or visual details, as if they predicted rewards. This happened even after they were told clearly these features meant nothing. People with weaker working memory, the mental space used to hold information in mind, showed more of this unhelpful learning.
The number of people tested in each experiment showing this automatic, unhelpful learning pattern.
Lab tasks only, unclear if this affects everyday choices like shopping.
Integrity screen: passed (3 checks) Checked 11 August 2026. Retraction record: none. DOI resolves at doi.org. Metadata record found (Nature Communications). Read the source
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