The sunk cost effect has been defined as the tendency to persist in an alternative once an investment of effort, time or money has been made, even if better options are available. The goal of this study was to investigate in rats the relationship between sunk cost and the information about when it is optimal to leave the situation, which was studied by Navarro and Fantino (2005) with pigeons. They developed a procedure in which different fixed-ratio schedules were randomly presented, with the richest one being more likely; subjects could persist in the trial until they obtained the reinforcer, or start a new trial in which the most favorable option would be available with a high probability. The information about the expected number of responses needed to obtain the reinforcer was manipulated through the presence or absence of discriminative stimuli; also, they used different combinations of schedule values and their probabilities of presentation to generate escape-optimal and persistence- optimal conditions. They found optimal behavior in the conditions with presence of discriminative stimuli, but non-optimal behavior when they were absent. Unlike their results, we found optimal behavior in both conditions regardless of the absence of discriminative stimuli; rats seemed to use the number of responses already emitted in the trial as a criterion to escape. In contrast to pigeons, rats behaved optimally and the sunk cost effect was not observed.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2017.04.003 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Neuroeconomically dissociable forms of mental accounting are altered in a mouse model of diabetes.
Commun Biol
January 2025
Nash Family Department of Neuroscience, Friedman Brain Institute, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, 10029, USA.
Those with diabetes mellitus are at high-risk of developing psychiatric disorders, especially mood disorders, yet the link between hyperglycemia and altered motivation has not been thoroughly explored. Here, we characterized value-based decision-making behavior of a streptozocin-induced diabetic mouse model on Restaurant Row, a naturalistic neuroeconomic foraging paradigm capable of behaviorally capturing multiple decision systems known to depend on dissociable neural circuits. Mice made self-paced choices on a daily limited time-budget, accepting or rejecting reward offers based on cost (delays cued by tone pitch) and subjective value (flavors), in a closed-economy system tested across months.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhen built environments in health care result from an evidence-based design (EBD) process, they are interventions that can improve patients' health outcomes. This commentary on a case discusses which ethical values should guide organizations' capital expenditure decisions about retrofits, which might be more costly than the original budget. This discussion urges reevaluation of the common assumption that capital improvements are "sunk costs," since such improvements can promote long-term positive health outcomes for an organization's patients, thereby advancing both financial value and ethical values.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSunk cost effects for thee but not for me: Decisions and predictions involving others.
Acta Psychol (Amst)
November 2024
Department of Psychology, University of Southern California, United States.
The sunk-cost effect (SCE) refers to the tendency to continue pouring resources into a venture due to unrecoverable prior investments, despite a potentially unfavorable outcome ahead. In the two studies reported here, we aimed to explore the issue of whether the SCE is susceptible to the involvement of others by differentiating the individual who would incur the cost (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPitfalls of reasoning in hospital-based transfusion medicine.
Transfus Med
December 2024
Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
Introduction: Hospital-based transfusion involves hundreds of daily medical decisions. Medical decision-making under uncertainty is susceptible to cognitive biases which can lead to systematic errors of reasoning and suboptimal patient care. Here we review common cognitive biases that may be relevant for transfusion practice.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding responses of people with ASD in diverse reasoning tasks: A formal study.
Cogn Process
October 2024
Indian Statistical Institute, Aminjikarai, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, 600029, India.
Recent studies have shown that in some reasoning tasks people with Autism Spectrum Disorder perform better than typically developing people. This paper compares four such tasks, namely a syllogistic task, two decision-making tasks, and a task from the heuristics and biases literature, the aim being to identify common structure as well as differences. In the terminology of David Marr's three levels of cognitive systems, the tasks show commonalities on the computational level in terms of the effect of contextual stimuli, though an in-depth analysis of such contexts provides certain distinguishing features in the algorithmic level.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!