Mice learn to avoid regret

 

                      Regret in both Humans and Mice

                                 Needa Shaikh

    Regret is a feeling that all humans experience on a daily basis. It is defined as the subjective experience of recognizing one has made a mistake. Humans have the tendency to assert a strong desire to avoid feeling regret. When an individual experiences regret, they are ultimately carrying negative utility - which can show up in multiple ways. Either they feel immediate post regret to make up for the losses they incurred or they experience long-term changes in decision making strategies to avoid regret all together. 

Before, many scientists believed that the feeling of regret was a cognitive behavior that was unique to only humans, however Brian Sweis and his team discovered that mice can also experience feelings of regret as well. 

In his study, 31 mice were trained to do a decision making task - they made decisions whether to spend time from a limited budget to achieve food. Through this experiment, the mice learned the structure of the task and became self-sufficient. In the data, they found that the mice had different “thresholds” of willingness when it came to waiting for the food. 

Through this we learned that the experience of regret in animals correlates with neurophysiological and behavioral regrets in humans as well. 

In the article, “The Psychology of Regret: Should we really aim to live our lives with no regrets?” By Melanie Greenberg, correlates to this study due to the fact that it mentions how an individual is influenced by his surroundings, and that can lead him to do actions that result in regret later on. They compared regret over different time periods, and research showed that over short time periods, people are more likely to regret their actions, whereas in long periods they are likely to regret actions not taken. This article also pointed out that regret can have a long-term effect on one’s well-being. Regret led to the rats becoming more open-minded with their choices/surroundings, and similarly humans feeling a sense of regret led to them making sense of the world, avoiding future negative behaviors, and ultimately being able to achieve social harmony. This article reminded me of Brian Sweis’s experiment with rats, due to the fact that it had similar results with how humans reacted to regret.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201205/the-psychology-regret