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Study: Rats Regret Making the Wrong Decision
An anonymous reader writes "Researchers at the University of Minnesota have discovered that rats in a decision making experiment showed three behaviors consistent with regret. David Redish and his graduate student Adam Steiner '...trained rats to do a task they call "restaurant row." The rat ran around a circle past a series of four spokes, each leading to a different flavor of food. As the rat came to the entrance of each spoke, a tone sounded that indicated how long it would have to wait to receive that specific flavor of food. The rat could choose whether to stay or go, depending on how much it liked that food and how long it would have to wait...The rats showed three behaviors consistent with regret. First, the rats only looked backwards in the regret conditions, and not in the disappointment conditions. Second, they were more likely to take a bad deal if they had just passed up a good deal. And third, instead of taking their time eating and then grooming themselves afterwards, the rats in the regret conditions wolfed down the food and immediately took off to the next restaurant.'"
That means even a rat is more ethical/honorable than former U.S. president George W. Bush.
"Oh drat." - Said the rat who got caught in the mouse trap
I'm not sure which emotions would go through my mind as the boa constrictor tightened its grip, but I'd imagine regret would be among them.
Gods, it's awesome being on the top of the food chain....
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
A lot of sensitive types will get "offended" and it will be modded down.
Are you sure it's sensitivity and not just an appropriate use of the "Redundant" mod?
Rats are well known to be social animals, and respond with loyalty and defensive behavior to protect their social group. Bush on the other hand, is just a traitor to humanity..
Where did we get all the evidence suggesting animals (i.e. humans) are incapable of making decisions?
or egg
which came first, the conclusion or the proposition?
If that's how you define regret, then yes, they certainly displayed it.
Looking around for other food immediately? They could have just been hungry.
Now we just need a way to make them interface with operating systems and log away happily at the scientific results as the rats look back at the penguin that could have been.
It's not really that surprising. Rats are pretty smart. Especially compared to many other rodents. My daughter had a pet rat, it was pretty surprising how attached my wife got to it. We had originally planned to let her get two rats because they are very social and do better in pairs. But the one my daughter picked did not like other rats at all. The people at the pet store said that she got into some pretty nasty fights with any other rats, even the ones from her original litter. But she really craved human interaction. My daughter forgot to lock her cage once. It was within the first two week of her getting the rat. It was not even five minutes later that my wife looked down because she felt something on her foot. The rat almost immediately found my wife and was trying to climb her leg.
Food is the best way to train a rat. we noticed that the one my daughter had would often times turn down food it liked if it thought we had something else that it liked better. I don't think I've seen too many other animals that would do that.
...I certainly regret having ever clicked on goatse.cx!
Centuries of mob rats can attest to this. Interesting that it can jump species in this manner.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
I thought politicians were shameless.
Corollary: Rats are smarter than people who keep voting for Democrats or Republicans.
There's a concept called analysis paralysis. With too many choices, one is likely to be unable to arrive a decision for fear of making one that he will regret. Experiments show that people buy less when more is available. I think this so-called paradox of choice explains part of why certain computing platforms, such as iOS and game consoles, thrive despite their restrictions or even because of them.
Besides, Jews and Christians have ample evidence in their scriptures that humans suck at decision making. Start with Jeremiah 10:23.
Yepp...
It seemed like a good idea at the time but cutting off my penis was, in hindsight, the wrong decision.
Me? I don't regret it one bit. Opened up (no pun intended!) a whole new world of possibilities when I joined the stretch scene. It's how I met my wife of 5 years. Gorgeous, smart, sexy, and a linux geek! I just wish her pussy wasn't so loose.
I know them very well.
If they want to salve their consciences, all they have to do is pay up.
When the rats ran off after wolfing down their disappointing meal to wait for their next meal, did they simply groom themselves while waiting for then next one instead of immediately before leaving? That just seems like they're being hungry or efficient, not regretful.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Other than HGttG reference (and these were rats, so that's a dubious connection), I'm not sure how these animal experiment news belong here. There's been quite a lot of them lately, I think.
What can change the nature of a rat ?
Now we know scientifically it's regret (and not "Many-as-One")
None of them are able to express regret at a bad decision ;-)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
I need to spend $32 to purchase the full text and PDF of the article?
Behavioral and neurophysiological correlates of regret in rat decision-making on a neuroeconomic task - Nature Neuroscience by Adam P Steiner
& A David Redish
Received March: 03, 2014
Accepted May: 14, 2014
Published online: June 08, 2014
You had to write only one word, you even had the meme to tell you how to write it... still fucked it up
They have created a maze that inevitably leads to rats regretting their decisions, no matter what logic they use to make them. Do you know what this means? We've given rats a taste of politics!
I wolved down those sentences and immediately took off to the next article.
I thought it was about Dice and Beta.
It is really comforting that someone is out there to share my guilt.
I'd expectt to see confirmation that either
A) Politicians get off on making the wrong choices.
or
B) Politicians have no method to discern from right and wrong.
I feel really bad when I trap a mouse or a rat, which I had to do a couple days ago. I prefer nonlethal traps when they work, but sometimes they don't, and on Saturday I managed to trap one in a way that badly hurt but didn't kill it. I felt really bad. I understand that they are intelligent and sentient creatures. They don't belong in our food, and the diseases they carry don't belong in our home, so I do have to deal with them from time to time. But I so much wish that non-lethal traps actually worked, that I could just catch and release them in nearby woods. Alas, most of the time, that doesn't happen. :(
Nonaggression works!
Rat Bastards
Something something that tasty looking cheese.
In related news, most Obama voters regret making the wrong decision as well.
Huhhuhuhhhuhhuhu. You said "PNAS"
You meant Obama obviously.
Humans do not react to thwarted interest similarly.