Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal: Vol. 22 No. 1 (2024)

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Browsing Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal: Vol. 22 No. 1 (2024) by Author "Nashawi, Lynn"

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    Predicting Explore-Exploit Behavior from Personality Traits
    (University of Oregon, 2024) Nashawi, Lynn
    The explore/exploit trade-off theorizes that individuals learn and make decisions in two different ways. Exploration entails trying new approaches that one is unsure about in order to gain new information. Exploration can be further divided into two subsections: random and directed exploration—choosing randomly when the total uncertainty is high, and choosing the most uncertain option, respectively. Exploitation involves utilizing what one already knows in order to achieve an expected result. Recent research (i.e., Gershman 2018) has demonstrated that different individuals might employ either exploration or exploitation in novel environments, but whether different personality traits influence the strategy that is used is a relatively unexplored area of inquiry. In the present study, we asked 67 participants to complete a choice-based, point-scoring computer task. We instructed participants to collect as many points (in the form of numerical value feedback) as they could by selecting among four options, some of which offered a steady stream of points, and others which were more randomized. Participants also completed an abridged form of the Big Five personality questionnaire. We hypothesized that negative emotionality would correlate negatively with directed exploration, that open-mindedness would correlate positively with both measures of exploration, and that impulsivity would correlate positively with random exploration. We did not find support for any of the three hypotheses; rather, the opposite occurred in negative emotionality and directed exploration (p = 0.018, r = 0.29). These findings can be applied in various fields of research, as they demonstrate variation in types of learning and decision-making styles across different settings.