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Behavioral scientists have been trying to uncover the patterns that humans follow when making decisions for decades. The insights gathered as part of their studies can help shape public policies and interventions aimed at prompting people to make better decisions, both for society and for their own well-being.

In many cases, humans are known to make decisions that they think will maximize the rewards they receive while minimizing their losses. Sometimes, however, people's choices are guided by automatic processes that they are unaware of and can be adversely impacted by so-called biases, systematic tendencies to fall into specific patterns of thought or behavior.

Researchers at TUD Dresden University of Technology recently carried out a study exploring the possibility that repeating specific decisions over time could bias decision-making, even in instances in which people's actions affect the rewards they will receive. Their findings, in Communications Psychology, suggest that when making sequential decisions (i.e., when asked to make a series of choices back-to-back), humans often tend to repeat familiar actions, even if alternative ones would yield greater rewards.

"Humans tend to repeat action sequences that have led to reward. Recent computational models, based on a long-standing psychological theory, suggest that action selection can also be biased by how often an action or sequence of actions was repeated before, independent of rewards," Eric Legler, Dario Cuevas Rivera, and their colleagues told ÌÇÐÄÊÓƵ.

"However, empirical support for such a repetition bias effect in value-based decision-making remains limited. In this study, we provide evidence of a repetition bias for action sequences using a sequential decision-making task."

As part of their study, Legler, Rivera and their colleagues carried out an experiment involving a total of 70 participants. These participants were asked to play a Pacman-style game on a computer.

The game required them to collect colored circles, which were worth different numbers of points, by moving a Pac Man-resembling character on a grid. During each experimental trial, participants were shown a target "score" that they had to achieve, as well as their current score, the number of moves they had taken so far, and the points they earned when they collected their most recent circle.

The researchers recorded the sequences of actions that participants performed when playing the game, noting when they repeated similar action sequences. They then used reinforcement learning models to simulate the decisions participants had taken during the experiment.

"Through computational modeling of choices, we demonstrate both the learning and influence of a repetition bias on human value-based decisions," wrote Legler, Rivera and their colleagues. "Using model comparison, we find that decisions are best explained by the combined influence of goal-directed reward seeking and a tendency to repeat action sequences. Additionally, we observe significant individual differences in the strength of this repetition bias."

The computational modeling performed by the team and the results of their analyses suggest that when humans make sequential decisions, they can be swayed both by the rewards they expect to receive and a tendency to repeat action sequences they have performed before. Interestingly, however, the team found that the extent of this repetition bias varied significantly between participants, with some appearing more prone to follow habitual patterns of behavior.

"These findings lay the groundwork for further research on the interaction between goal-directed reward seeking and the repetition of action sequences in human decision making," wrote the authors.

The recent work by Legler, Rivera and their colleagues could soon inspire other behavioral scientists to investigate the strength of the repetition bias they observed using similar or different experimental methods. Collectively, these efforts could inform the development of new interventions aimed at supporting individuals in their decision-making and preventing them from making unfavorable decisions due to a tendency to follow habitual choice patterns.

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