Rats Feel Regret

One problem with monitoring the media: Being exposed to the truly stupid.

This "study" finds that rats feel regret, not to be confused with feelings of disappointment.

From The Independent:

Rats are capable of feeling regret about their own actions, an emotion that has never previously been found in any other mammals apart from humans.

Researchers set up a test called Restaurant Row in which the rats had to decide how long to wait for food.

“It's like waiting in line at the restaurant,” Professor David Redish, of Minnesota University, told BBC Nature News. "If the line is too long at the Chinese restaurant, then you give up and go to the Indian restaurant across the street."

In some cases, the rats decided to move on from one “restaurant” that offered nice food but was taking too long, only to find the next one offered a less popular dish.

Faced with this scenario, the rats often stopped and looked back at the previous restaurant and were more likely to wait for longer for something nice.

Professor Redish said they had had to be careful to design the study so that they could monitor signs of regret and not just disappointment.

"Regret is the recognition that you made a mistake, that if you had done something else, you would have been better off," he said.

"The hard part was that we had to separate disappointment, which is just when things aren't as good as you hoped. The key was letting the rats choose."

The study, published in “Nature Neuroscience”, questions claims that regret is a uniquely human emotion.

WHO CARES?

"The rats often stopped and looked back at the previous restaurant."

Oh, good grief.

...Dr Mark Walton, of Oxford University, who reviewed the research, said the findings were significant and praised the methodology.

The findings aren't significant to me at all.

Rats and regret?

Really?