Like humans, monkeys make mistakes because of 'costs that can no longer be recovered'.
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In many cases, you need to invest money and effort to get something, and if you achieve your goals, you will get more benefits than the costs you spend. If you understand that you will not get enough profit even if you make further efforts, it is a correct decision to give up the recovery of the cost you have invested so far and suspend the action, but people have already invested and recovered In many cases, it is not possible to make a correct decision because of the sunk cost that cannot be made. Experiments have confirmed that not only humans but also monkeys tend to make mistakes because of sunk cost.
Capuchin and rhesus monkeys show sunk cost effects in a psychomotor task | Scientific Reports
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-77301-w
Delightful Study Finds Monkeys Hate Sunk Costs as Much as Humans Do
https://www.sciencealert.com/monkeys-also-struggle-to-let-tasks-go-that-they-ve-already-sunk-time-into
The phenomenon in which you cannot withdraw from the cost you have already spent, even though it leads to loss if you continue to spend money on an action, is called the Concorde effect . This name is named after the supersonic passenger plane ' Concorde, ' which was once developed but was discontinued without reaching the profitable line. It is said that Concorde was unable to interrupt the project because it was being developed with a large amount of money, even though it was expected that it would not be on the profitable line during development, resulting in a lot of losses.
The phenomenon of continuing to lose money as a result of being sunk cost occurs in various situations such as relationships, games, and work. A research team at Georgia State University in the United States conducted an experiment to see if this phenomenon was also seen in capuchin monkeys and rhesus monkeys . In this experiment, the research team gave the monkey the task of 'moving the cursor with the joystick to track the circle on the computer screen.'
The schematic diagram of the experiment is as follows. The circles are randomly placed on the screen, and when you operate the cursor with the joystick to put them inside the circle, the circle starts to move on the screen in a linear motion. If you move the cursor according to the movement of the circle and a certain amount of time elapses without sticking out of the circle, the monkey can receive a reward (snack), and if the cursor sticks out of the circle, it will fail and the next Trial begins. There are 3 patterns of 1 second, 5 seconds, and 7 seconds for each trial to continue, and 12 times in one set (24 times) are 1 second, 6 times are 5 seconds, and 6 times are 7 seconds. I did. In addition, monkeys have a 'group with no color signal' whose background color does not change through trials, and a 'color' that changes the screen color to light gray 1 second after the circle starts moving and to dark gray 5 seconds later. It was divided into 'groups with signals of'.
In the above experiment, if you do not receive the reward 1 second after you start tracking the circle, you will not receive the reward unless you keep tracking for another 4 or 6 seconds. One second is a very long time for monkeys, so the quickest way to get paid is to immediately interrupt the trial if you don't get paid after more than a second of tracking. It was to move on to trial.
However, an analysis of 80 sets (1920) trials performed by monkeys over several days showed that monkeys tended to continue trials until they were rewarded, even if it was more efficient to interrupt the trials. Even if the background color changes with the number of seconds and it is easy to notice the passage of seconds, the monkeys tended to be pulled by the time they had already spent and continue trying.
'The monkeys continued their trials five to seven times longer than optimal,' said research team Sarah Brosnan. 'The longer the monkeys have already spent on the trial, the more they complete the trial. It's more likely. '
by Michael Ransburg
It has been confirmed not only in monkeys but also in pigeons and mice that there is a tendency to make mistakes due to the influence of sunk cost. For this reason, the research team believes that the Concorde effect is not unique to humans, but common to many species. The Concorde effect was thought to be caused by ergonomic factors such as 'rationalizing one's behavior' and 'caring about the reputation of others', but it is more instinctive because the same results were obtained in animals. It may be based on some parts.
Of course, patience can be rewarded when wild animals search for food, wait for eggs to hatch, or build nests, and the 'uninterrupted' decision is not always a bad idea. .. In addition, humans are more intelligent than other animals, so it is easy for them to notice during their actions that 'it is not worth the effort to complete it.'
'We tend to keep trying, and if we find that we're sticking to things too much, we should reflect on it a bit. Is there a good reason to keep trying, or long-term benefits?' Should we think and give up without compensation? This is a real challenge, but with good cognitive skills, we can overcome the emotional heartache of sunk cost. '
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