Learning from Experience

A recent study published in Communications Psychology found that while some people seem primed to learn from negative experiences, others either fail to make a connection between cause and effect, or are so hooked on some kind of harmful behavior that they decide not to act on that understanding.

The folks behind the study sorted their subjects (based on their response to a conditioned punishment task) into three main phenotypes: “sensitive” people who made a connection between behavior and punishment, and were thus able to change their decisions in the future; “unaware” people who failed to make that connection, but who were able to change their behaviors after the connection was explained to them; and “compulsive” people who, despite the negative consequence and an explanation of why it happened, persisted with the same behaviors.