Rapid Learning Is More Likely If We’re Uncertain

Most of the time, we learn gradually. But every once in awhile, something happens and we immediately learn to associate a stimulus with a result.

"If you are uncertain, or lack evidence, about whether a particular outcome was caused by a preceding event, you are more likely to quickly associate them together," says Sang Wan Lee. CollegeDegrees360/Flickr/CC BY-SA 2.0

Most of the time, we learn gradually. But every once in awhile, something happens and we immediately learn to associate a stimulus with a result. For example, maybe you have had bad service at a store once and sworn that you will never shop there again.

This type of one-shot learning is more than handy when it comes to survival—think, of an animal quickly learning to avoid a type of poisonous berry. In that case, jumping to the conclusion that the fruit was to blame for a bout of illness might help the animal steer clear of the same danger in the future.

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• Life Is Full of Uncertainty, We’ve Just Got to Learn to Live With It