[HN Gopher] Study sheds light on why some people keep self-sabot...
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       Study sheds light on why some people keep self-sabotaging
        
       Author : bikenaga
       Score  : 10 points
       Date   : 2025-07-24 21:41 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | bikenaga wrote:
       | Original article:
       | https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00284-9#Bib1
        
       | xg15 wrote:
       | There is another article linked from this one, that contains a
       | slightly more detailed description of the game:
       | 
       | > _Participants clicked on two planets to amass points which put
       | them in the running to win a monetary prize.
       | 
       | Unbeknown to the participants, clicking either planet led to a
       | similar amount of reward, but could also result in the emergence
       | of different spaceships._
       | 
       | From the player's POV, the main task of the game wasn't about the
       | spaceships, it was about finding the planet with the most reward
       | (as the players didn't know the rewards were mostly equal).
       | 
       | I wonder if the "compulsive" behavior might have something to do
       | with the player believing that the planet with the pirate ship
       | were also the one with the largest trade reward - so in their
       | mind, abandoning the planet completely would be a bad strategy,
       | because they might lose more points by not trading with the
       | planet than keep by not triggering the spaceship.
       | 
       | Especially if the spaceship only appears in 20% of all clicks and
       | the player can make themself believe it will appear "almost never
       | anyway".
        
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       (page generated 2025-07-24 23:01 UTC)