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> Agitated, anxious honeybees, on the other hand, responded with pessimism when researchers shook them Sorry, all credibility out the window right here. They s
by anm89 4y ago
> Agitated, anxious honeybees, on the other hand, responded with pessimism when researchers shook them
Sorry, all credibility out the window right here. They seem to be more interested in being literary than in being accurate.
- Sakos 4y agoWhat did they get wrong?
- polishdude20 4y agoHow does a bee "respond with pessimism"?
- simonh 4y agoOr rather, how do you tell that's what is happening? How do you distinguish buzzing with delight, as described int he article, from buzzing due to hyperactivity from excessive energy levels?
- giantg2 4y agoAs a beekeeper, you can actually tell some things by the buzzing. A hive being robbed will sound different from a "normal" hive.
- simonh 4y agoI'm sure that's true, they can respond in various ways, but how much can you tell about the internal experience of individual bees? In the article hyperactivity from sugar stimulus was interpreted as delight, but it could just as easily have been having a really bad trip on all that sugar.
- giantg2 4y agoConsidering that people are generally imperfect in assuming the underlying emotion of others based on their actions, I find these sorts of studies highly suspect. You can't equate animal activity to human emotion equivalents.
- otikik 4y agoIt goes like this: bzzz bzzzz bzzz
- outworlder 4y agoHN guidelines say you should not complain about others not reading the article, but this qualifies. See elsewhere on this thread for the actual definition being used by the researchers.
- Footkerchief 4y agoIn the text, the word "responded" is a link to this study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982211005446 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221... > A pessimistic cognitive bias is manifested in an increased tendency of subjects to classify stimuli as likely to predict punishment (or a reward of less value). We were able to use the same approach to test for cognitive biases in honeybees because bees are capable of associative learning and can base judgments about novel stimuli on previous experiences [24, 25, 26, 27]. Using an olfactory learning protocol for conditioned proboscis extension, we trained honeybees to extend their mouthparts to a two-component odor mixture (CS+) predicting a reward (e.g., 1.00 or 2.00 M sucrose) and to withhold their mouthparts from another mixture (CS−) predicting either punishment or a less valuable reward (e.g., 0.01 M quinine solution or 0.3 M sucrose; Figure 1).
- anm89 4y agoOk, I'll rollback on this one then. I still think this highlights an issue that drastically reduces credibility in this type of research when they try to overload words to try to make things sound more interesting to people. I would not call that a true overlap with the human trait of pessimism. But fair enough, at least it has a specific definition in this context which I figured it did not.
- exodust 4y agoI thought same thing as you initially, but "pessimism" is tied to anticipation of bad outcomes, which apparently was measured. Just makes the study all the more remarkable, and underscores the importance of animal welfare and habitat preservation.