Although it is known that planning for even a single goal can be difficult for humans to do perfectly, humans successfully manage to plan for many goals in spite of their cognitive limitations. Paul Sharp, from Dr. Eran Eldar’s lab, discovered that humans solve this problem in part by using an efficient strategy where they persist in pursuing goals even when they are irrelevant, saving a major cost of switching between planning for different types of goal. Moreover, Paul found that humans use this strategy more so when the the goal is to avoid punishment, which aligns with work showing that humans prioritize punishment avoidance given the evolutionary costs of failing to handle threats appropriately. Paul demonstrated these findings in a large-scale online experiment in collaboration with researchers from University College London.
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