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Monkeys and Cognitive Dissonance
Hugh Pickens writes "People deal with cognitive dissonance — the clashing of conflicting thoughts — by eliminating one of the thoughts. Psychologists have suggested we hone our skills of rationalization in order to impress others, reaffirm our "moral integrity" and protect our "self-concept" and feeling of "global self-worth." Now experimenters at Yale have demonstrated that other primates employ the same psychological mechanism. In one experiment, a monkey was observed to show an equal preference for three colors of M&M's and was given a choice between two of them. If he chose red over blue, his preference changed and he downgraded blue. When he was subsequently given a choice between blue and green, it was no longer an even contest — he was now much more likely to reject the blue. Rationalization is thought to have an evolutionary utility; once a decision has been made, second-guessing may just interfere with more important business. "We tend to think people have an explicit agenda to rewrite history to make themselves look right, but that's an outsider's perspective. This experiment shows that there isn't always much conscious thought going on," said one researcher."
...but frankly, I think these are some pretty heavy conclusions to draw from the discussed studies.
I think we should all take the high road and not take a swing at the underhanded pitch thrown to us here. Bush administration references are just too easy. Save yourself the time and just laugh preemptively.
I got a catholic block.
Heck, one look at drivers, TV, and movies today could've told ya that for a LOT less money.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
I'm sorry, but Blue M&Ms taste disgusting. Even a monkey knows that.
As a vision scientist, I have to ask if they controlled for trichromacy vs. dichromacy? In other words, like humans, some monkeys do not see the three colors that most humans do...
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Monkeys are doubleplus ungood.
I pretty much live in a continual jumble of thoughts, and then somehow fit them all together into a single picture, where both hold together. Contradiction! I used to be horrified of internal inconsistency and contradiction, and now, I just don't care, and take the whole jumbled mess for what it is.
This is my sig.
I'm not so sure this is the same thing as what humans experience as cognitive dissonance, or it may only be a subset of the phenomenon. When people are employing cognitive dissonance there is actual work going on - they are not just making the same choice again, but rationalizing why that choice is the correct one and in the process deciding for it again. They are willful and not just sticking to a rut.
When I become aware of conflicting thoughts, I do not simply discard one of them. I dissect the underlying reasons for each of the thoughts, check for possible common connections, then reason over the graph/tree until I find the unifying solution, if any. If there is no unifying solution (or optimal choice), then the thoughts represent distinct problems with distinct solutions.
I thought that's what everybody did.
It seems like a significant portion of consciousness is creating the delusion that the conscious mind is leading the charge when most time it is the last to know. Even muscle movement can be shown to be marshalled and initiated by lower brain systems slightly before the conscious mind even thinks the thought to move.
"Man is not a rational animal. He's a rationalizing animal."
- Robert A. Heinlein
Kind thoughts do not change the world
non-second-guessing candy-coated-chocolate-eating primate overlords!
-WtC
*sig, what sig?*
Creator of RPerl, Scouter, Juggler, Mormon, Perl Monger, Serial Entrepreneur, Aspiring Astrophysicist, Community Organiz
It's a bit of a jump to compare the selection of M&Ms by colour to the motives of revisionist historians.
This involves what might well be two different issues.
Cognitive dissonance involves two conflicting beliefs, which arises from two different, incompatible, views of the world.
Repeated choices and rationalisation is something rather different.
If a monkey finds that not choosing the blue one results in a satisfactory result, why would it, why should it, try the blue one when presented with an alternative?
Cognitive dissonance would be if it had an idea that only red candy was good, and only blue things smaller than a walnut were good, and it then had to cope with the conflicting ideas when confronted with the choice.
Funnily enough, since people rarely get truly reliable ideas at a first guess, resolving cognitive dissonance is a necessary human function, and if one of two conflicting theories is successful, it makes sense to adhere to that one as being more likely to be right.
I think this needs to be thought through a whole lot more carefully.
It's called reenforcement. Like Pavlov's dog salivating.
The blue M&M was not preferred. The monkey felt bad about being given what it didn't prefer. This bad feeling became associated with the blue M&M and the monkey therefore preferred any other colour.
Reminds me of what happens when I've bought bad buggy software. After a while even if there are improvements, if you've been disappionted enough you'd rather use any other piece of software that does the same job.
In other words, for some slashdotters, Windows is the blue M&M.
What exactly is new here?
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This site is an excellent example of how people don't deal with cognitive dissonance very well. All you need to do is look at articles that paint popular companies in a slightly bad light. Rather than try to reconcile the fact that something they like did something they don't like, they just try to rationalize it away. There's always someone that leaps to the front with a carefully constructed, big-ass explanation of why this issue is overblown, or it isn't an issue at all. It is almost like they're on the payroll for said companies. In more extreme cases, the apologist may be forced to concede that the act was bad, but they can always backpedal and say, "well, at least they aren't murdering puppies all the time like this other company!" Ah, nothing like capitalizing on the popularity of moral relativism to make weak arguments.
So this is why the other side in the [insert heated political debate] is wrong.
And here I thought that they were just stupid.
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
so there's that, too
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
How can they ethically give M&Ms to an animal? Depraved scientists, inflicting harm just for the fun of it.
... and then they built the supercollider.
It was Robert Heinlein who quipped "Man is not a rational animal. Man is a rationalizing animal". Looks like if one wanted to use that as a distinction of humanity, one is out of luck.
That monkey's choosing behavior sounds a lot like what humans do that we call "throwing out the baby with the bathwater". Choosing green over blue because we chose red over blue is not very highly "cognitive". It's the kind of stupid thinking that looks like cognitive malfunction, or just monkey business, when humans do it.
--
make install -not war
Who we are? Monkeys! :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a15KgyXBX24
(dance, monkey, dance!)
One that hath name thou can not otter
Not that I am in any way supporting or rejecting the claims made in the study, but your criticism is probably unfounded**.
.05), and designated the items within each triad as choices A, B, and C (choices were specific to each individual monkey); although there were no significant differences in preferences across the three M&M colors within a triad, we conservatively used each subject's least preferred color of the three (i.e., the one the monkey took longest to obtain during preference testing) as option C.
The M&M (and sticker choices) were different across subjects, so it is unlikely that a systematic bias could result from visual perception of the items. The M&M choices chosen for the subjects were determined by relatively equal preference in a pretraining phase of the experiment. Given the fact that they find an effect, it's unlikely that it's due to an inability to tell the items apart.
Specifically:
We first assessed the monkeys' existing preferences for M&M's of different colors by timing how long they took to retrieve individual M&M's. For each monkey, preferences for at least nine different M&M colors were assessed. As each preference test began, the monkey was inside its home cage, just outside a testing chamber, and was allowed to watch as the experimenter placed one colored M&M on a tray outside the other side of the chamber. The door to the testing chamber was opened, and the monkey was allowed to enter when it wished to retrieve the M&M. We measured how quickly the monkey entered the testing chamber to retrieve the M&M. Preferences for each color were assessed across 20 trials per monkey; trials for each color spanned two experimental sessions.
After preference testing, we performed analyses of variance to determine whether each monkey had statistically significant preferences. We identified triads of equally preferred colors (all ps >
**By the way, I've been reading your slashdot comments for quite some time, and so don't take this as a personal affront or anything. =) I think you're probably one of the better scientist/posters on the site. =)
This idea is simply not true. It really bugs me when I read something like this.
First of all, people can hold thoughts in cognitive dissonance for a long time, sometimes an entire lifetime without necessarily eliminating one or the other. I realize I'm opening up myself to a lot of snarky comments by saying it, but it's true nonetheless.
Secondly, cognitive growth, that is, conceptual growth, particularly in math or in other logically structured areas of thought, only comes about through the synthesis of thoughts that are otherwise held in cognitive dissonance. This is Hegel's famous thesis, antithesis, synthesis triad.
In either case, cognitive dissonance is not always resolved by rejecting one thought or the other.
Funny as hell, and it shows the author is an idiot. If you chose the yellow car that had bad gas mileage over the blue "sensible" car, than you probably weren't rating gas mileage as an important consideration. Your were probably considering the options/engine displacement as being higher on your objectives list. Different people have different preferences, which is why someone else would rate high gas mileage as more important. Now, if the cars were the exact same except for color and gas milage, than you could be said to have a sub-optimal intellect. Or neon yellow could be you favorite color and you could find blue dreadfully dull. Again, the example given has nothing to do with the study, or rather shouldn't if the study measures what it claims, which I doubt.
I think a simple alternative interpretation is just that monkeys, like most animals, are curious. Having seen both red and blue m&ms frequently, it can categorize both and knows what each tastes like. When it sees a green one next to a blue one it goes "ooh a new colour" and tries the green.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
.. the explanation for why I love to read Slashdot, even though I'm a Republican.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Maybe you've decided that accepting contradiction is the best course of action because it's a tactic you've chosen before... not because you've discovered it to be the best tactic. ...I'm just sayin' is all...
ZERO
Blue food barely exists in nature. There are two foods which are blue. Blue Berries and nasty French Cheese.
And how many blue berries grow in the jungle, anyway? --Of course, jungles are filled with all kinds of weird and un-cataloged beasties and plants, some of which may indeed be blue, but they could just as likely be toxic and bitter tasting. . . My point here is. . , my point. . .
Well, what I'm saying is that maybe there were other processes at work in the test subject's decision-making process. Heck, I don't even like blue smarties, and I don't have hair on my bum.
And anyway, I thought cognitive dissonance was the psychological result of believing one thing while evidence to the opposite exists right in your face. That's the more entertaining take on it, anyway. Nobody is going to throw a fit over blue M&M's. But reality versus sacred cows. . . Man, you can start wars over stuff like that! Cuz, you know, some things really are true while others really are not. Everything else is opinion. Funny how wrong people with strong opinions are generally the first to start shooting.
Say. . . Did they ever try selling boxes of all red Smarties?
I bet if they did, it flopped. Life, after all, is all about making decisions. When the decisions have all been made, you're better off dead.
-FL
Not extremely surprising.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
I also do not eliminate cognitive dissonance. Oh wait... yes I do.
This is something I notice nearly everyone does. We hate to admit we're wrong and if you do admit it, people are more prejudiced against you. If you look at it logically, it makes almost no sense because why should a previous decision or conclusion have any effect on my current conclusion at this time when I have the luxury of gathering more information on the question. Until this was pointed out to me by Nicholas Taleb in "Black Swan" and "Fooled by Randomness", I wasn't very keen to change mind after I made a decision. Taleb claims that George Soros, one of the most successful investors, have been known to change his mind from one day to the next on things that have huge financial impacts. When asked why, he supposedly answers in a very matter of fact tone that he knows more now. If only we were all so logical... Well I guess it's just hardwired into us.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
If you don't already know about it, you may be pleased to know that philosophers have described this exact process. The original thought is called the Thesis, the thought that comes along and contradicts it is called the Antithesis, and the new insight gained from refusing to reject either out of hand but instead working toward a new understanding that takes both into account, that is called the Synthesis.
This idea is often attributed to Hegel, and in fact I previously knew it as the Hegelian Synthesis, but according to Wikipedia, he didn't invent the idea and merely referenced it once or twice. Nevertheless, and regardless of who invented it, I think it's a great concept. Obviously you can't always take this approach because practical constraints often force a conclusion or a decision, but it's nice to have the capacity to reason this way and to know that you're skipping it intentionally when you decide to just make a quick decision.
Obviously not. The green taste sexier.
It should've ended with: "We tend to think people have an explicit agenda to rewrite history to make themselves look right, but that's an outsider's perspective. This experiment shows that there isn't always much conscious thought going on," said one researcher who was using his skills of rationalization in order to impress others.
"Initially, for Windows 95 Users were given the opportunity to use three browsers: Netscape, Opera, and Internet Explorer.
Once preference for Netscape was established, a subsequent choice made Netscape unavailable. Users were then presented only with Internet Explorer and Opera.
Once the flaws of Internet Explorer were discovered, it was downgraded. Later, when Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Opera were once again presented, Internet Explorer was no longer given an equal preference."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Have you ever been in a waiting room with the usual set of old magazines. None of them seems particularly interesting. Then someone comes into a room and takes a magazine and starts reading it. Suddenly that magazine becomes very interesting, you might try to read some headlines over their shoulders if you can. I am not the only person who experiences this, frequently after I put down a magazine I took at random a couple of people will reach for it.
It is just as likely that rather than the blue M&M being downgraded the green one becomes upgraded because we all want what we can't have at the moment!
"This experiment shows that there isn't always much conscious thought going on"
I would have said 'is hardly ever' rather than 'isn't always', but the idea is there.
"This experiment shows that there isn't always much conscious thought going on," said one researcher." Would this, perhaps be self-referental?
Dealing with multiple conflicting thoughts, in more simpler terms, grocking paradox, and actually looking and accepting counter intuitive thoughts, is not an inntely mamillian phenomonon.
( Lord knows how much I wish good spelling was inately mamillian.)
Look at how cats and mice behaive in the wild in dealing with fear. They sence the danger, access the situation, and in the face of fear, can act anyway. From this perspective, it is not a language/intelligence phenomon. Where as, denyl, and deception... Hmm... Can puffer fish be accused of deception? Leopard spots?
There is HUGE amount of anthropomorphizing going on here. After RTFA, their defintion of Cognitive Dissonance, albet dated, now encompasses a lot more types of language/thought based processes. I wouldn't give these YALE researchers a grade of C. As always, there is much, much more research to be done. ( Their scientific method is good, but the concolusions...The thing that this study definatly proves... Eddie VanHalen is NOT a monkey. ( He chooses BLUE M&Ms )). Pffft
If I'm presented with a box of different chocolates (bonbon) then I tend to eat one from each first. So, if I were that monkey, I'd have made sure to taste the blue one as the second or third choice.
I think they over-interpret their findings. I can see that they have given a reasonably reliable demonstration of the phenomenon 'cognitive dissonance' in monkeys; after all, it only means that once you've made a decision, you are likely to make the same decision again. This makes sense in the real world, of course - we make a decision, find that it works well enough, and in the future we don't need to spend time and effort on making that decision again. Otherwise we waste time that could be used on finding food, having sex and other things that promote the survival of the species.
But talking about 'moral integrity' and 'global self-worth' is far-fetched. For one thing, I can't see that it is necessary to explain it any further than I have outlined above. I think there may be reasons to believe that animals other than humans have something like a sense of morality and self-worth, but this has nothing to do with it. I wish researchers (or perhaps it is the reporter?) would stop this kind of nonsense - it makes people lose respect for the genuine and valuable research that goes on into understanding the other animals on the planet, because they get associations of bunnies in waist-coats drinking tea.
Initially the monkey did not have a preference. After being forced to decide between two of the three colours, once more allowed free choice, it exhibited biased behaviour. There was evidence. The change was apparently due to the coerced choice between two equipotentials. People would rationalize this later, trying to explain why "blue" wasn't as good. I would guess that a pretty interesting case could be made that the ability to break such ties is an evolutionary advantage. At base, tie breaking could be critical to survival. Imagine. The predator is behind you. Ahead the path forks. You know equally good ways of escaping the predator are available down each path. But if you stop to try and work out which is best, the predator will eat you while you hesitate. Afterward, because you survived the chase going down one path rather than the other, you will prefer that path. There's a lot of reinforcement for that preference, even if none of it is logical.
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
The monkeys had experience eating all of the colors of M&Ms used in the experiment (and, there were more colors than the few you mention). Safety of the choice has little to do with the outcome.
You know, this is oddly similar to a strange error in modal reasoning I've been noticing a lot in my philosophical work.
Take a mathematical function "f". It's obvious to all of us that -f(x) does not mean the same thing as f(-x). With modal logical operators such as the "necessity" or "obligation" operators, this holds as well: "it is necessary that not-x" means "it is impossible that x", but "it is not necessary that x" means "it is possible that not-x"; and "it is obligatory that not-x" means "it is prohibited that x", but "it is not obligatory that x" means "it is permissible that x".
However, when it comes to assertions of straightforward truth and goodness, as opposed to the stronger notions of necessity and obligation, people suddenly lose the ability to think in such modal categories, if they ever had it at all. With necessity and obligation, we have four categories each: f(x), -f(x), f(-x), and -f(-x); those translating to necessity/contingency/impossibility/possibility and obligation/supererogatoriety/prohibition/permission, respectively. But when we speak of truth and goodness, these categories collapse: it -f(x), i.e. it's not true that x , we say f(-x), i.e. it's true that not x; and likewise with not-good being taken to mean good-not.
But that doesn't follow. While in the proper modal logics f(-x) does entail -f(x), the other way around is not so. It seems to me that we should use the same logic when speaking of straightforward truth and goodness too; just being non-true does not make something false (it could be nonsense or otherwise carry no truth value), even though being false makes something non-true; and just being non-good does not make something bad (it could be morally irrelevant), even though being bad makes something non-good. But most people don't seem to think in those terms; everything is either true or false, good or bad, no middle ground. (And before someone screams "principle of bivalence", note that using modal notation like this, you can express such concepts while keeping bivalent functionality in your logic).
Which brings us back on topic. The monkeys in this experiment were given the choice of red and blue and, choosing red but not-choosing blue (i.e. judging good(red) and not-good(blue)), in the same act chose not-blue (taking not-good(blue) to entail good(not-blue)), when they didn't logically have to to so. So later, presented with blue and green, they remained consistant with their earlier opinion that good(not-blue), when if they had been logical earlier they would have just seen a color they had not-chosen and another color they had not-chosen, rather than a color they had not-chosen and a color they had chosen-not.
I guess this kind of flaw runs pretty deep in the psyche, which explains why it pops up in human reasoning so often...
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
"It's called reenforcement. Like Pavlov's dog salivating.
The blue M&M was not preferred. The monkey felt bad about being given what it didn't prefer. This bad feeling became associated with the blue M&M and the monkey therefore preferred any other colour."
I've already tried to address this issue in other posts in this thread, but the authors take great pains to equilibrate preference for the choice offered to the Monkeys.
Furthermore, Pavlov's dogs do not salivate because of reinforcement per se. Pavlov's dogs salivate because of the repeated pairing of a non-response-eliciting Conditioned Stimulus (CS), like a tone, with a reponse-eliciting Unconditioned Stimulus (US), like meat. You're thinking of Operant conditioning, in which a behavior is rewarded with a particular outcome (for example, pressing a lever to get food).
It could be that your failure to appreciate the novelty of the work is due to your own lack of knowledge in the particular subject area.
Humans at least have the "I'm a crafty consumer" thing, where if you have bought something you don't want to see any flaws in it. Admitting that the thing isn't as good as you thought both means you have wasted money, and even worse, that you aren't as savvy as you thought.
See for instance the recent Slashdot post about cheap upgrades for PCs. Hordes of console owners rushed in to say "Oh you should have bought console X for the money, much better upgrade". Convincing themselves as much as others that they have done the "right" choice.
dad your 5 minutes a day have expired my turn now
The statement about eliminating second-guessing without conscious thought has been proven a long time ago for humans. Read Robert Cialdini's brilliant 'Influence: science & practice' for the explanation and references to studies. For example, one of the studies has shown that for court juries, a public vote results in a deadlock more often than an anonymous vote. Once people have expressed their opinion in public, they are very unlikely to change, even if additional evidence shows that they are dead wrong.
"there isn't always much conscious thought going on"
Yeah, I had kind of gathered that from looking around.
Cheers.
Did the monkey which didn't like blue and therefore chose green, choose no M&Ms if presented a choice between only blue candies?
Here's your sig.
If my boss makes me choose a color of mm, then I'm sure as heck going to develop a preference real quick, without any need for rationalizing my decision. Boss says I like blue better now? Okay, I like blue better now, just don't stop the paycheck.
Really, Leon Festinger didn't prove cognitive dissonance to me, all he showed is that experience teaches people to appreciate what they are most familiar with. Cognitive dissonance on the other hand, is about having reason to believe that something you already believe is untrue and still trying to find a way to hold to the questionable belief. Certainly I don't think the monkeys were ever given any reason to believe their choice was inferior, so I don't see this or Leon Festinger's experiments as having proved CD, although Leon at least could question his subjects about their beliefs and try to isolate CD.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
They should have performed the experiment with Reeses monkeys to ensure there was no bias.
Scientist : The Matrix is everywhere. It's all around us, even in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.
The Matrix is the world that has been pulled over your eyes, to blind you from the truth.
Monkey : What truth?
Scientist : That you are a slave, Monkey. Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison...for your mind....Unfortunately, no one can be..._told_ what the Matrix is...you have to see it for yourself.
Scientist opens a container which holds two M&Ms : a blue one, and a red one. He puts one in each hand, and holds them out to the Monkey.
Scientist : This is your _last chance_. After this, there is no turning back.....You take the blue M&M, the story ends. You wake up and believe...whatever you want to believe. You take the red M&M.....you stay in wonderland...and I show you just how
deep the rabbit hole goes.
Is it any wonder the monkey never took the blue one? It wanted to learn Kung-fu...
Round 1: Geeks are presented vi and emacs as choice of editor
....
Round 2: Geeks are presented vi and pico as choice of editor
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
The monkey chose wisely. I would also have not taken the blue pill^W M&M
N/t!
Training monkeys to choose red over blue?
The next step is to get them the right to vote.
Is this a new tactic by Diebold to guarantee the vote goes republican?
Oh wait the research was sponsored by M&M Mars. Its just a move to get monkeys hooked on chocolate.
The chocolate lobby has seen the success the cigarette companies have had.
Never mind.
(in homer's voice)--- oooh "Global Self-Worth" is that a new Dounut? or maybe a Tree-Hugger beer.
Can anyone say "moron"
Granted, the research is interesting...but I digress. I so freekin' tired of know it all psycologists and their "enlightened" ideas. I am not a global citizen, and articles that assume we automatically agree with their post-modern idioms are propaganda(research aside).
And yes I am proudly posting this as an Anonymous Coward...why because I don't have an account.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In the case of the two paths. Initially, the prey had no idea which path was better, but the second time, he knows one path saved him last time, but still knows nothing about the other. In this case, the logical choice is to stick with what you know works, especially if don't have a lot of time to consider alternatives.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
why we're using M&Ms for scientific experimentation??
Sounds like this study is biased by commercial funding if you ask me!
People deal with cognitive dissonance -- the clashing of conflicting thoughts -- by eliminating one of the thoughts.
It isn't hard to hold conflicting thoughts. Any person that believes in any religion doesn't eliminate the conflicting thoughts, they just go about there business without reconciliation. Often the better for doing it.
I tried this experiment once myself. Stupid monkeys threw out all the "W"s.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Green+M%26M
Since most people spend their lives trying to impress other people I guess rationalization is a critical skill that should be the focus of our educational system.
"We tend to think people have an explicit agenda to rewrite history to make themselves look right, but that's an outsider's perspective. This experiment shows that there isn't always much conscious thought going on," said one researcher." This is all old hat if you've been following Bush & Co for the past 7 years.
-FL
I still say they should bring back the tan M&M's.
I just checked; they're not even available in the custom colors. Doubtless the removal of the Twenty-third color is part of a plot by the Illuminati to weaken the Discordians!
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I was going for funny too! ("wow mod parent down")
They say that the monkey had no preference before being forced; then red would be chosen over blue.
If the monkey is red-green color blind, as some people are, then of course it could distinguish blue from red or green. But not green from red. So when presented with a green and blue m&m candy, how would it know the difference from a red vs blue choice? Green and Red are equivalent to the colorblind monkey, aren't they? Or am I misunderstanding partial color-blindness?
If this were so, then nothing was added to their efforts by presenting the green and blue choice and no new conclusions can be drawn from it.
In other news... If the monkey can see colors fine, and distinguish from the three, there could be another logic going on here. Perhaps red and blue stuff is often poisonous but sometimes tasty, but green stuff is generally always pretty tasty. The little simian fella might hem and haw over red versus blue. But show a green in the mix and he'll take that bet every time. Now at this point in our program I would be scrolling back to re-read the finer points in the article and double check if the lack of preference shown initially was tested with green involvement or if it was only a blue vs green base-line that was taken. But our friendly /. post form opened a new page. Forgive me if I'm off here.
Anyway, like the m&m's it's all just food for thought.
Peace out
Mojo
That actually used to be one of the major exercises in our French classes (in France): write an essay, holding a thesis and an antithesis, followed by an open conclusion which must lead to further thought.
The fact that you had to present valid and solid arguments to represent either side did quite often lead me to turn the antithesis into the thesis and vice-versa of course, as old and new evidence was weighed up.
It's actually really good practice when looking at everyday situations, because it allows you to understand the various sides of an argument, and can be quite fun
Sounds like pretty simple behavior for an animal with a memory and no sense of curiosity for the sake of curiosity (e.g. not scanvenging for food in new areas.)
Doesn't look like anything fancy going on.