Resource-Rational Models of Human Goal Pursuit

2021

Article

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Goal-directed behaviour is a deeply important part of human psychology. People constantly set goals for themselves and pursue them in many domains of life. In this paper, we develop computational models that characterize how humans pursue goals in a complex dynamic environment and test how well they describe human behaviour in an experiment. Our models are motivated by the principle of resource rationality and draw upon psychological insights about people's limited attention and planning capacities. We found that human goal pursuit is qualitatively different and substantially less efficient than optimal goal pursuit. Models of goal pursuit based on the principle of resource rationality captured human behavior better than both a model of optimal goal pursuit and heuristics that are not resource-rational. We conclude that human goal pursuit is jointly shaped by its function, the structure of the environment, and cognitive costs and constraints on human planning and attention. Our findings are an important step toward understanding humans goal pursuit, as cognitive limitations play a crucial role in shaping people's goal-directed behaviour.

@article{Prystawski2020Resource,
  title = {Resource-Rational Models of Human Goal Pursuit},
  author = {Prystawski, Ben and Mohnert, Florian and Tošić, Mateo and Lieder, Falk},
  journal = {Topics in Cognitive Science},
  volume = {14},
  number = {3},
  pages = {528--549 },
  howpublished = {Online},
  publisher = {Wiley Online Library},
  month = aug,
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.13140/RG.2.2.36400.58884},
  url = {https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tops.12562},
  month_numeric = {8}
}