pessimism and SA study - article link

JackieG

calliecritturs

I don't think it' was meant to base your life's training on ... it IS British and the flavor of it was likely a bit less serious than you guys are taking it.  We Yanks tend to get WAY deeper into the whole emotional aspect of things than a Brit would. 

 

I have to disagree with you.  I think the study was done in all seriousness and the tone wasn't in the least meant to be tongue in cheek.   It's a serious subject and I believe the professor was taking it seriously, even if I disagree with the terminology.

I talked to David and his comment was a bit cautionary ... that in general he sees Brits are a bit more in love with "scientists" in general and they tend to be more "put on a pedestal" than they are here ... the particular agency that reported on this IS the branch of the BBC that reports on animal doings ... and sometimes things are put out there as "scientists say" that may simply not be very good. In other words ... "scientists say" may be grounds enough for them to publish an article, but it surely doesn't necessarily mean it was a GOOD study.  Just that the phrase "scientists say" tends to be given more merit there than it would be here.

AT the same time ... David too was laughing because the particular description and bowls scenario is Billy and Luna to a "T" and in those two particular personalities the words are so appropriate it is literally laughable.

Krissim Klaw

I would be curious to see how long it took the various dogs to figure out the initial negative/positive bowl locations depending on if they fell into the "pessimistic" and "optimistic" category.

Haha, it's one of the first things I decided I wanted to measure. It's easy enough to teach your own dogs the same task they used in the study. I started teaching Kivi and Erik a variation of it to give me an idea of how long the training would take. It was super interesting before I got as far as even teaching them to discriminate between "good" and "bad". Even when Erik figured out the game and that one bowl would have milk and the other water, he still checked the water every time just in case it wasn't water this time. He even tasted it every time, just in case it smelt like water but wasn't. In contrast, Kivi wouldn't even bother checking the other bowl when he found the milk. Kivi is pretty keen on food. 

Even more fascinating, my first attempt I tried on Erik because he's a persistent little beggar involved a bitter-tasting additive to the milk instead of just plain water. It was obviously too aversive even for Erik, because he decided he didn't want to play before he worked out how to avoid the bitter milk. When I tried again a week later with milk and water, he was outrageously jumpy about tasting either, but he did it anyway. I couldn't believe that he was acting like he expected it to not only taste horrific but leap out of the bowl and attack him, yet he still tasted it. Now that's optimism. I imagine if I'd tried Kivi with the bitter stuff he'd never participate in one my experiments ever again. He is generally not an optimist, but you should see the way he approaches strange dogs. He is pretty optimistic about making new friends. Interesting to think a dog might be inherently optimistic about some things, but pessimistic about others.