Summary: New experiments challenge the notion that human behavior is merely a case of minimizing errors, which are frequently portrayed as “noise.” According to researchers, sounds offers valuable insights into mental processes, ranging from social reasoning to decision-making.
They demonstrate how various types of noise can reflect different cognitive processes, rather than just random errors, by using computational models. This perspective might alter the way that mental research is conducted, as well as improve medical, decision-making, and ethical decisions.
Important Information
- Noise as Insight: Variability in human behaviour may reveal underlying mental processes.
- Decision-Making Role: Some noises aids in the brain’s decision-making by facilitating the flow of information.
- Applications in philosophy: Knowing sound might improve cognitive models and guide decision-making in the real world.
Origin: APS
The necessity of variation in people’s behavior and behavior has been a phenomenon psychologists have long taken into account in their analyses. Human behaviour differs between individuals, as well as within distinct instances for one person.  ,  ,
In a particular problem of , Perspectives on Psychological Science, published in March 2025, the study of that specific variability is the subject of study. Many psychologists refer to this study as “noise.”  ,
The discussion was started by Joakim Sundh and his colleagues from Uppsala University by first providing a historical overview of how sound has recently been studied in psychological study.
They contend that noise is commonly viewed as an inner factor that can provide information about the procedure being studied rather than as an additional element that needs to be minimized.  ,  ,
According to them, “every noises has a cause, and various sources of noise can produce various expressions of noise.”
” If these various sources of noise are linked to specific operations, then one can use the way that noise is expressed in data to make judgments about those processes.”  ,
Sundh and his team also use their Precise/Not Precise ( PNP ) model, which was created to examine how various sources of noise are linked to various psychological processes, to further their own research.
They use the PNP model to perform three experiments, illustrating how distributions of noise can be studied to identify analytical and intuitive explanations of reasoning ( Sundh et al., 2025 ).  ,  ,
The authors conclude by comparing the three extra contributions to the particular problem, coming to the conclusion that each of the papers “represents excellent examples of the possibilities inherent in using noise to inform clinical inquiry by treating it as a source of information.”
The purpose of sounds in the human mind approach is explored by Adam Sanborn and his team from the University of Warwick in further development of this debate.  ,  ,
Asking others to perform the same task on numerous times, yet when they are nearer to it, produces remarkably loud conduct, according to the authors.  ,  ,
Does noise actually improve our mental processes, or does it cause errors in them?
Sanborn and his collaborators discuss the role of noises throughout the stages of data processing, from perception to processing to reaction.
They contend that it is more accurate to consider noise as a characteristic of cognitive processing as opposed to a glitch that causes it ( Sanborn et al., 2025 ).  ,  ,
According to Sanborn and his collaborators,” not only could one say that “noise” in” creation” is a characteristic and not a spider, but it is also an essential element that supports our ability to deal with a world of such difficulty that precise evaluation is computationally impossible,”  ,  ,
Although it is commonly accepted that loud behavior is inevitable, in many cases it is desirable for people to be uniform in how they categorize information. For instance, a physician who evaluates for skin cancer is expected to make a reliable and accurate diagnosis every day.
Florian Seitz ( University of Basel ) and his coauthors are pursuing a better understanding of the ways that noise can be reduced as people categorize information in their study.  ,  ,
To accomplish this, they present a model that considers potential sources of behavioural variability during the process of understanding and processing information.
In their simulation, Seitz and colleagues used two common category structures: ( 1 ) rule-based structures where a category is based on a single feature, and ( 2 ) information-integration structures where a category is determined by multiple features that are taken into account at once.
The researchers claim that by incorporating continuous data into categorization-based experiments, they may be able to better identify the sources of behavioral noise and better categorize the cognitive processes at play ( Seitz et al., 2025 ).  ,  ,
According to Seitz and his team, “evaluating people’s category beliefs in a continuous way may therefore help disentangle perceptual and process-related sources of behavioral variability,” adding that this finding could be used to inform both future cognitive models and applied interventions.  ,  ,
APS Fellow Michel Regenwetter and his team from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign explore the existence of irrational moral judgment in response to recent chaotic responses to current events like the COVID-19 , pandemic, and ongoing campaigns of misinformation.
They provide the argument’s use of the idea of transitivity. This idea is applied as a kind of logic equation in discussions of morality, assuming that A is superior to C if A is better than B and B is better than C.
Despite the significant variation in their behavior, Regenwetter and his coauthors investigate whether participants can be described by the principle of transitivity. 28 people from the Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, study included in their study.
Each participant received a list of 126 moral vignettes, each of which came with a binary-choice question. They were instructed to pick the “worse” or “morally wrong” option for each vignette.
The team uncovered that participants did practice transitive moral thinking, which suggests that a common set of moral principles underlies how people evaluate the moral worth of one item over another ( Regenwetter et al., 2025 ).  ,  ,
There may be order beneath the chaos, they wrote, “despite the amazing heterogeneity of behavior in the world around us.”  ,
About this news about research in psychology and behavioral neuroscience
Author: Hannah Brown
Source: APS
Contact: Hannah Brown – APS
Image: The image is credited to Neuroscience News
