Excited to share our new preprint! 🚨 Does human learning have an automatic aspect? Is it possible that we learn things that are counterproductive and only lead to reduced gains? We asked participants to choose cards to win rewards. Some cards had higher chances of winning than others, but the card locations on the screen were completely irrelevant. No matter how hard we tried, people still assigned value to locations. We gave them clear and vivid instructions. We quizzed them. We tested them across three sessions with 600 trials. And yet, they kept assigning value to the locations as if they mattered.