Do some animals show similar cognitive biases as ours?
May 11, 2010 9:14 AM Subscribe
Is cognitive bias blindness peculiar to humans?
I followed a link in Mind Hacks the other day to an older entry from last year about bias blindness, Unique like everyone else which I found amusing and passed it on to a friend. Who then lolled about how 'we are a nation of narcissists'.
Wait a minute, I thought to myself, How do you know that this cognitive bias is so recent in making so as to be peculiar to one culture? Maybe it goes way back to early hominids. For that matter, maybe it isn't even restricted to primates. Maybe some intellegenses are just not good at remembering the results of their actions and so unable to rate themselves accurately?
I followed a link in Mind Hacks the other day to an older entry from last year about bias blindness, Unique like everyone else which I found amusing and passed it on to a friend. Who then lolled about how 'we are a nation of narcissists'.
Wait a minute, I thought to myself, How do you know that this cognitive bias is so recent in making so as to be peculiar to one culture? Maybe it goes way back to early hominids. For that matter, maybe it isn't even restricted to primates. Maybe some intellegenses are just not good at remembering the results of their actions and so unable to rate themselves accurately?
There's no conclusive evidence that anything other than humans has the level of cognitive thought that such a bias would require.
posted by fizzzzzzzzzzzy at 9:35 AM on May 11, 2010
posted by fizzzzzzzzzzzy at 9:35 AM on May 11, 2010
Many of the cognitive biases listed in that article require a certain sense of self (e.g.: "88% of college students rate themselves in the top 50% of drivers", emph. added). Given that the number of non-primate species that pass the mirror test can be counted on one hand -- and that the mirror test is the current state of the art in determining self-recognition -- it seems unlikely to me that we're at the stage where we can detect (or even define?) the cognitive biases of other species.
posted by mhum at 10:07 AM on May 11, 2010
posted by mhum at 10:07 AM on May 11, 2010
Response by poster: There are some methodologies used for measuring cognitive feats in babies, so I thought perhaps methodologies had been developed to measure similarly complex things in animals.
And, I know that the line between human and animal intelligence tends to get pushed out. Only humans do ____ and then later you see some articles about some animal doing the same.
posted by bleary at 10:37 AM on May 11, 2010
And, I know that the line between human and animal intelligence tends to get pushed out. Only humans do ____ and then later you see some articles about some animal doing the same.
posted by bleary at 10:37 AM on May 11, 2010
Response by poster: Speaking of cats, though they don't pass the mirror test, I've observed one of mine seemingly making a decision about whether to jump from a garage roof to the house roof.
Part of the bias has to do with perception of one's success (I'll break it in to pieces and consider the perception of others, and hte perceptions of others' successes outside of this).
So it seems that perhaps one could find some external behavior where maybe the choice to attempt the behavior might be related to the perception of risk, or success, or etc. Whether or not you could conclude that the animal had a perception of how often they'd been successful at ___ which then led to the choice to do ____ again is a leap. I don't know how bad the leap is.
So then, for perception of the success of others, if you set up a competition and have an animal observe other animals attempting the same thing, then set up a condition where they both attempt it at once (race to catch some reward?) then maybe you could get an idea about how accurately the animal rates the idea of success of itself vs the other for doing hte task.
perhaps if you make risk a big factor so that it hurts to fail... so maybe we could observe animals deciding whether to fight in the wild.
Rambling here. trying to explain how I think it might be possible to try and measure this.
posted by bleary at 10:43 AM on May 11, 2010
Part of the bias has to do with perception of one's success (I'll break it in to pieces and consider the perception of others, and hte perceptions of others' successes outside of this).
So it seems that perhaps one could find some external behavior where maybe the choice to attempt the behavior might be related to the perception of risk, or success, or etc. Whether or not you could conclude that the animal had a perception of how often they'd been successful at ___ which then led to the choice to do ____ again is a leap. I don't know how bad the leap is.
So then, for perception of the success of others, if you set up a competition and have an animal observe other animals attempting the same thing, then set up a condition where they both attempt it at once (race to catch some reward?) then maybe you could get an idea about how accurately the animal rates the idea of success of itself vs the other for doing hte task.
perhaps if you make risk a big factor so that it hurts to fail... so maybe we could observe animals deciding whether to fight in the wild.
Rambling here. trying to explain how I think it might be possible to try and measure this.
posted by bleary at 10:43 AM on May 11, 2010
The Wikipedia page defines it as the "tendency to draw incorrect conclusions in certain circumstances based on cognitive factors rather than evidence. "
So the question is, do animals show evidence of operating on something other than the evidence before them?
I would say that the entire basis of animal training is "convincing an animal to act on something other than the evidence before them." You can train a dog not to eat a steak lying on the ground. You can train a dog not to bark when someone knocks at the door. You can train a horse to jump a barrier, even though the horse can't see it at the last minute due to the limits of their vision, and has to trust the rider will steer them correctly.
If we want to rule out training, I can still think of plenty of examples of animals drawing incorrect conclusions by ignoring the evidence. One of my favorites is a story that Dave Barry tells about his three dogs after a hurricane ripped apart his front porch.
Every morning he had to let the dogs out the front door, then open the screened porch's door to let them go out. This was like a ticking panicky dog bladder time bomb, and if he didn't move quickly enough to open the second door, they would all pee on the porch.
The hurricane stripped away all of the screening, leaving only the screen door standing. The screen door was literally the only place where you couldn't just step freely off the porch.
Nevertheless, every morning he had to go through the same routine of opening that second door, or his dogs - ignoring the evidence that they could simply hop off the edge into the yard - would pee on the porch.
posted by ErikaB at 12:38 PM on May 11, 2010
So the question is, do animals show evidence of operating on something other than the evidence before them?
I would say that the entire basis of animal training is "convincing an animal to act on something other than the evidence before them." You can train a dog not to eat a steak lying on the ground. You can train a dog not to bark when someone knocks at the door. You can train a horse to jump a barrier, even though the horse can't see it at the last minute due to the limits of their vision, and has to trust the rider will steer them correctly.
If we want to rule out training, I can still think of plenty of examples of animals drawing incorrect conclusions by ignoring the evidence. One of my favorites is a story that Dave Barry tells about his three dogs after a hurricane ripped apart his front porch.
Every morning he had to let the dogs out the front door, then open the screened porch's door to let them go out. This was like a ticking panicky dog bladder time bomb, and if he didn't move quickly enough to open the second door, they would all pee on the porch.
The hurricane stripped away all of the screening, leaving only the screen door standing. The screen door was literally the only place where you couldn't just step freely off the porch.
Nevertheless, every morning he had to go through the same routine of opening that second door, or his dogs - ignoring the evidence that they could simply hop off the edge into the yard - would pee on the porch.
posted by ErikaB at 12:38 PM on May 11, 2010
Response by poster: Some back channel discussion had someone give me
Ambiguous-cue interpretation is biased under stress- and depression-like states in rats. as a possible example.
posted by bleary at 2:36 PM on May 11, 2010
Ambiguous-cue interpretation is biased under stress- and depression-like states in rats. as a possible example.
posted by bleary at 2:36 PM on May 11, 2010
Response by poster: another follow-up for anyone who finds this post via search or something...
The Thoughtful Animal blogs "Pessimistic Pooches? Depressed Doggies? Not So Fast!" about a biased ambiguous-cue experiment for dogs.
posted by bleary at 9:52 AM on October 13, 2010
The Thoughtful Animal blogs "Pessimistic Pooches? Depressed Doggies? Not So Fast!" about a biased ambiguous-cue experiment for dogs.
posted by bleary at 9:52 AM on October 13, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by iamkimiam at 9:17 AM on May 11, 2010