The role of risk tolerance in navigation strategy decisions

Everyday situations require us to face a tradeoff to inform our decisions: exploit known information or explore for new information. Although both have risks, empirical research has not shown whether individuals prefer exploring or exploiting across contexts. In the present study, we examined the explore-exploit tradeoff as a theoretical framework across two broad domains: decision-making and spatial navigation. In this registered report, we applied computational modeling to human behavior on a novel version of the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) to predict behavior on a spatial navigation task in which the navigator must either exploit a learned, familiar route or explore a new shortcut. If the hypothesis that risk tolerance is a domain general trait is correct, we predicted that explore-exploit patterns would correlate across these tasks. We also examine the predictive power of computational models for the IGT on behavioral uncertainty and the role of confidence in spatial navigation strategy. Our findings suggest that, while there is some overlap in risk tolerance between spatial navigation and gambling, the influence of exploration and exploitation on navigational decision-making is weaker than initially predicted.