UNSW researchers uncover why some people persist in harmful behaviours – even when they've been shown where they're going wrong.
Why do some people keep making choices that hurt them, even when the outcomes are obvious?
A new study led by UNSW Sydney's Dr Philip Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel has found that for a small number of people, the problem isn't due to a lack of motivation or capacity, but rather a subtle but persistent failure to connect their actions with its consequences.
The paper, published recently in Nature Communications Psychology, details a simple online learning game where participants are faced with making choices that lead to either reward or punishment. Researchers observed three distinct behavioural types that dictated whether they emerged winners or losers.
There were Sensitives – those who worked out which choices led to bad outcomes and changed their behaviour to avoid them. Next were the Unawares – people who didn't work it out, but were able to modify their strategies once they were shown the error of their ways. The third group – and the ones who the researchers were most interested in – were the Compulsives, who continued to make the wrong choices even after being shown where their strategy was letting them down.
"We found that some people just don't learn from experience," said Dr Jean-Richard-dit- Bressel. "Even when they're motivated to avoid harm and are paying attention, they fail to realise their own behaviour is causing the problem."
How the game worked
In the game, participants were asked to click on one of two planets, where each led to a spaceship that either delivered points, or stole from all the points accrued so far. The punishment wasn't guaranteed every time, but after a few rounds of trial and error, the cluey participants – or Sensitives – worked out that the punishment only came from one planet, and eliminated that planet from their strategy. Meanwhile, the Unawares and the Compulsives failed to make the connection between one planet and negative outcomes, so continued to be 'punished' intermittently.
But after a few rounds, the researchers revealed to all participants which planet led to which ship, and which ship triggered the punishing loss.
"We basically told them, 'this action leads to that negative consequence, and this other one is safe'," said Dr Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel. "Most people who had been making poor choices changed their behaviour immediately. But some didn't."
Same same, but different
The most recent study follows on from past research that ran the game among psychology students in Australia. But the latest study had a few key differences. Rather than local students, this time around participants came from a more diverse, international pool: 267 people from 24 different countries, hailing from different backgrounds with a much wider age range including participants over 50.
Other new elements to the study included six-month follow-ups, where participants were invited to play the same game. And this time, at the end of the game researchers asked participants what they thought they were doing and what they believed was optimal.
What the researchers found
Extending the test beyond Australian psychology students, the researchers were able to test whether what they'd observed in earlier research was consistent across cultural, age and demographical differences. As it turned out, it was.
"We ran the same task with a general population sample from 24 countries – people of different ages, backgrounds, and life experiences," he said. "And what we found was that the same behavioural profiles emerged. Everything we'd seen in Australian psychology students replicated almost exactly."
In the Australian studies, roughly 35% turned out to be Sensitives, 41% fell into the Unawares category, while a further 23% were Compulsives. In the new study – with an international focus and inclusion of a broader demographic – about 26% were Sensitives, 47% were Unawares and 27% were Compulsives.
Dr Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel said the slight shift in the number of Sensitives to Compulsives in the international study is partially attributable to more 50+ year-olds in the study, who were more likely to have a Compulsive profile.
"This may be linked to cognitive flexibility – the ability to adapt your thinking. And that tends to decline with age."
Interestingly, when participants in the most recent study were invited back to play the same game six months later, most showed the same behavioural profile.
"That was one of the more striking findings," said Philip Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel. "It suggests these aren't just random mistakes or bad days. They're stable traits – almost like personality types. This is not to say they're fixed, just that they may require intervention to break."
The researchers were also able to confirm that the choices made by the Compulsives could not be simply explained away as habit, as though people were on autopilot and not really thinking about what was going on. By asking participants to explain why they made their choices, it was clear they were well aware of why they made their choices.
"We asked participants what they thought was the best strategy, and they often described exactly what they were doing—even when it was clearly the wrong choice," said Dr Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel.
He said this suggested a deeper issue: a failure to integrate new knowledge into a strategy that minimises adverse outcomes – that even when people understand the risks, they don't always adjust their actions accordingly.
Real-world implications
While the researchers are careful not to overstate the findings, the results of the punishment-learning-game experiments could inform the way we tailor treatments for self-destructive behaviour like gambling, drug and alcohol addictions.
"Of course, real life is far more complex than the simple game we devised," Dr Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel said. "But the patterns we're seeing, where people ignore both experience and information, are similar to what we see in gambling and other compulsive behaviours."
The research also has important implications for public health messaging. Many campaigns rely on providing information – about smoking, drinking, diet, or financial risks – with the assumption that people will act on it. But this study suggests that for some, information alone isn't enough.
"We've shown that standard information campaigns work for most people—but not for everyone," Dr Jean-Richard-dit-Bressel said. "For compulsive individuals, we may need a different kind of intervention."
