Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Explore-exploit decisions are commonly guided by individuals’ knowledge states, with accumulating knowledge typically reducing exploration and promoting a shift toward exploitation. However, beyond the amount of knowledge one possesses, metacognitive regulation of knowledge may critically shape exploration. This study investigates how metacognitive regulation of one’s knowledge base influences explore-exploit decisions and interacts with individuals’ actual knowledge levels. Experiment 1 showed that, contrary to the expert–novice hypothesis that limited knowledge promotes exploration, individuals with greater prior knowledge exhibited higher exploration than those with less prior knowledge. This effect was accompanied by greater awareness of one’s own knowledge state among more knowledgeable individuals. Experiment 2 provided converging evidence by showing that metacognitive regulation through self-monitoring further increased exploration. Together, these findings suggest that explore–exploit decisions are shaped not only by how much individuals know, but also by how they metacognitively regulate their knowledge.