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NEW YORK, July 14 – Economists know that when people invest time or money in something, it's hard for them to get out – even if their project is condemned.
seem to have the same craziness, according to a study published Thursday in the American newspaper Science .
Economists say that this implies what they call the mistake of "unrecoverable cost"
Say you buy tickets for a show. There is no point in going there, just for the sake of it, if you decide that you do not like what it's about, say, or that you're tired of. It does not matter if you go there or not, you will not get your money back.
And for countries, simply because a lot of money has been spent on a program, there is no need to continue pumping if it is no longer at the national level.
For a long time researchers investigated whether animals resembled people in this regard – fiercely attached to objects simply because of their past efforts with them.
Scientists from three neuroscience and psychology laboratories of the University of Minnesota A coordinated experiment on mice, rats and humans.
Guess what happened?
"Mice, rats, and humans behaved similarly," David Redish, professor of neuroscience at the university and co-author of the study. says AFP
Waiting for a reward
Rodents were trained to feed in a labyrinth with four "restaurants", one in each corner. During each trial, they arrived in an "offer zone" where a tone informed them of the waiting time to eat something – in this case flavored pellets.
If the animals accept the offer, they move to a waiting area, where an audible countdown tells them how long they have to wait – from one to 30 seconds. Before all this they were trained to understand these sound signals.
For humans a similar experiment was set up, only with videos instead of food as lure. They could see kittens, landscapes, ballroom dancing or bike accidents.
Waiting time before they see the video is represented by a download bar
In each case, human participants could simply say no to waiting. go to next play or video
Experiments have shown that rodents, like people, tend to exhaust the waiting period once waiting has begun
"More they were coming out already, plus they "
It's as if people were lining up, he says.
" Once you get to the tail, you tend to stay In line, the more you've been online, the more likely you are to finish in the line, "added Redish.
But the wait is not free because the overall duration of the experiment is limited.
longer a rodent waits for his favorite dumpling – for example, banana or flavored chocolate – in a given room, the less total food he can nibble during the test.
Redish makes this comparison: "I'll wait 30 seconds for this caviar, even if honestly, if it was five seconds it was well worth it.
" But standing 30 seconds for caviar I should really skip it, because I could have a five-sec line potato. "
The study had its limits: it concerned only 65 humans (university students), 32 mice and 32 rats, and the tasks they faced were not identical." it opens the way to other experiences
The challenge that goes from the front "will be to know that we really capture the same phenomenon across species", Shelly Flagel, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Michigan, not involved in the study, said The New York Times .- AFP
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