Mice treat sunk costs as real

From Erica Goode at The New York Times:

In a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, investigators at the University of Minnesota reported that mice and rats were just as likely as humans to be influenced by sunk costs.

The more time they invested in waiting for a reward — in the case of the rodents, flavored pellets; in the case of the humans, entertaining videos — the less likely they were to quit the pursuit before the delay ended.

“Whatever is going on in the humans is also going on in the nonhuman animals,” said A. David Redish, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Minnesota and an author of the study.

Via Michelle Dawson, here is another study with a differing emphasis:

We found that the sunk cost effect was lower in the ASD [autism spectrum disorder] group than in the control group.

Here are previous MR posts on sunk costs.

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