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Positive and negative incentive contrasts lead to relative value perception in ants

Humans usually assess things not according to their absolute value, but relative to reference points – a main tenant of Prospect Theory. For example, people rate a new salary relative to previous salaries and salaries of their peers, rather than absolute income. We demonstrate a similar effect in an...

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Autores principales: Wendt, Stephanie, Strunk, Kim S, Heinze, Jürgen, Roider, Andreas, Czaczkes, Tomer J
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6606023/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31262401
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.45450
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author Wendt, Stephanie
Strunk, Kim S
Heinze, Jürgen
Roider, Andreas
Czaczkes, Tomer J
author_facet Wendt, Stephanie
Strunk, Kim S
Heinze, Jürgen
Roider, Andreas
Czaczkes, Tomer J
author_sort Wendt, Stephanie
collection PubMed
description Humans usually assess things not according to their absolute value, but relative to reference points – a main tenant of Prospect Theory. For example, people rate a new salary relative to previous salaries and salaries of their peers, rather than absolute income. We demonstrate a similar effect in an insect: ants expecting to find low-quality food showed higher acceptance of medium-quality food than ants expecting medium quality, and vice versa for high expectations. Further experiments demonstrate that these contrast effects arise from cognitive rather than mere sensory or pre-cognitive perceptual causes. Social information gained inside the nest can also serve as a reference point: the quality of food received from other ants affected the perceived value of food found later. Value judgement is a key element in decision making, and thus relative value perception strongly influences which option is chosen and ultimately how all animals make decisions.
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spelling pubmed-66060232019-07-03 Positive and negative incentive contrasts lead to relative value perception in ants Wendt, Stephanie Strunk, Kim S Heinze, Jürgen Roider, Andreas Czaczkes, Tomer J eLife Ecology Humans usually assess things not according to their absolute value, but relative to reference points – a main tenant of Prospect Theory. For example, people rate a new salary relative to previous salaries and salaries of their peers, rather than absolute income. We demonstrate a similar effect in an insect: ants expecting to find low-quality food showed higher acceptance of medium-quality food than ants expecting medium quality, and vice versa for high expectations. Further experiments demonstrate that these contrast effects arise from cognitive rather than mere sensory or pre-cognitive perceptual causes. Social information gained inside the nest can also serve as a reference point: the quality of food received from other ants affected the perceived value of food found later. Value judgement is a key element in decision making, and thus relative value perception strongly influences which option is chosen and ultimately how all animals make decisions. eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd 2019-07-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6606023/ /pubmed/31262401 http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.45450 Text en © 2019, Wendt et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Ecology
Wendt, Stephanie
Strunk, Kim S
Heinze, Jürgen
Roider, Andreas
Czaczkes, Tomer J
Positive and negative incentive contrasts lead to relative value perception in ants
title Positive and negative incentive contrasts lead to relative value perception in ants
title_full Positive and negative incentive contrasts lead to relative value perception in ants
title_fullStr Positive and negative incentive contrasts lead to relative value perception in ants
title_full_unstemmed Positive and negative incentive contrasts lead to relative value perception in ants
title_short Positive and negative incentive contrasts lead to relative value perception in ants
title_sort positive and negative incentive contrasts lead to relative value perception in ants
topic Ecology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6606023/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31262401
http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.45450
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