Irrational risk aversion in ants is driven by perceptual mechanisms

Agrò, Massimo De; Grimwade, Daniel; Czaczkes, Tomer J.

doi:10.1101/620054

Cited by 4 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…The evidence presented in this study adds to previous studies showing parallel value-distorting effects in humans and insects, including decoy effects (Sasaki & Pratt, 2011;Tan et al, 2014Tan et al, , 2015, risk aversion (De Agrò, Grimwade, & Czaczkes, 2019;Shafir, Wiegmann, Smith, & Real, 1999;Shapiro, 2000;Waddington, Allen, & Heinrich, 1981), discounting (Cheng, Peña, Porter, & Irwin, 2002;Wendt & Czaczkes, 2017), and expectation-driven valuation (Bitterman, 1976;Couvillon & Bitterman, 1984), suggesting that insights into human behavior can, in part, be transferred to insects. Insect-based comparative psychology studies allow much tighter control over experimental subjects and conditions, offering stringent tests of basic insights from human psychology and the experimental flexibility to test hypotheses untestable on human subjects.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Labeling effect in insects: Cue associations influence perceived food value in ants (Lasius niger).

Wendt¹,

Czaczkes²

2020

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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Humans usually assess options not in terms of absolute value, but relative to reference points. The framing of alternatives can strongly affect human decision-making, leading to different choices depending on the context within which options are presented. Similar reference-point effects have been recently reported in ants, in which foragers show contrast effects: Ants overvalue a medium-quality food source if they were expecting a poor one, and vice versa for expectations of good food. However, studies of human consumer psychology have demonstrated that expectations, for instance, from product labels, can drive value perception in the opposite direction, via a process of assimilation. For example, an expensive bottle of wine is perceived as more enjoyable compared with a cheaper bottle, even if the wine is the same. In this study, we demonstrate a similar labeling-association effect in an insect: Ants showed assimilation effects by spending twice as long drinking at medium-quality food if it was scented with an odor previously associated with high quality than if it was scented with a poor-quality label. The presence of odor cues in the food during consumption and evaluation is critical, as without them, odor-driven expectations of quality result in contrast, not assimilation effects. The addition of a quality label in the food thus reverses contrast effects and causes value to be aligned with expectations, rather than being contrasted against them. As value judgment is a key element in decision-making, relative value perception strongly influences which option is chosen and ultimately how choices are made.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 74%

Labeling effect in insects: Cue associations influence perceived food value in ants (Lasius niger).

Wendt¹,

Czaczkes²

2020

Journal of Comparative Psychology

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“…It is possible that a 0.2 M solution is near the detection limit of the ants, and as the detection limit is approached, discrimination ability also suffers, in line with basic psychophysical principles (Gescheider 1997). In a previous experiment, L. niger ants successfully learned to distinguish between 0.1 M and 0.3 M after three visits to each molarity (De Agrò et al 2019). The ants thus likely struggled to distinguish 0.2 M and 0.4 M with so few exposures.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Very rapid multi-odour discrimination learning in the ant Lasius niger

Czaczkes

Kumar

2020

Insect. Soc.

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Insects can be very good learners. For example, they can form associations between a cue and a reward after only one exposure. Discrimination learning, in which multiple cues are associated with different outcomes, is critical for responding correctly complex environments. However, the extent of such discrimination learning is not well explored. Studies concerning discrimination learning within one valence are also rare. Here we ask whether Lasius niger ants can form multiple concurrent associations to different reward levels, and how rapidly such associations can be learned. We allowed individual workers to sequentially feed on up to four different food qualities, each associated with a different odour cue. Using pairwise preference tests, we found that ants can successfully learn at least two, and likely three, odour/quality associations, requiring as little as one exposure to each combination in order for learning to take place. By testing preference between two non-extreme values (i.e. between 0.4 M and 0.8 M having been trained to the qualities 0.2, 0.4, 0.8 and 1.6) we exclude the possibility that ants are only memorising the best and worst values in a set. Such rapid learning of multiple associations, within one valence and one modality, is impressive, and makes Lasius niger a very tractable model for complex training paradigms.

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“…This includes the very highly powered experiment 3 ( n = 470), which showed very good sensitivity to small changes in aversive substance, but no evidence of value distortion due to pheromone presence. In addition, a separate study (Oberhauser et al, in preparation) also showed no value distortion effects of pheromone, using identical associative learning methods to those that have been used successfully to detect many such effects in the same species ( Czaczkes et al, 2018 ; De Agrò et al, 2019 , 2020 ; Wendt et al, 2019 , 2020 ; Wendt and Czaczkes, 2020 ). Thus, while completely proving a lack of effect is not possible, we are nonetheless quite confident that pheromone trail presence does not influence perceived value in L. niger .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 94%

Trail Pheromone Does Not Modulate Subjective Reward Evaluation in Lasius niger Ants

2020

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Comparing the value of options is at the heart of economic decision-making. While an option may have an absolute quality (e.g. a food source has a fixed energy content), the perceived value of the option may be malleable. The factors affecting the perceived value of an option may thus strongly influence which option is ultimately chosen. Expectations have been shown to be a strong driver of perceived value in both humans and social insects, causing an undervaluation of a given option if a better option was expected, and an overvaluation if a poorer one was expected. In humans, perceived value can be strongly affected by social information. Value perception in some insects has also been shown to be affected by social information, showing conformism as in humans and other animals. Here, over a series of experiments, we tested whether pheromone trail presence, a social information source, influenced the perceived value of a food source in the ant Lasius niger. We found that the presence of pheromone trails leading to a sucrose solution does not influence food acceptance, pheromone deposition when returning from a food source, drinking time, or frequency of U-turns on return from the food. Two further assays for measuring changes in food acceptance, designed to increase sensitivity by avoiding ceiling effects, also showed no effect of pheromone presence on food acceptance. In a separate study, L. niger have also been found to show no preference for, or avoidance of, odors associated with foods found in the presence of pheromone. We are thus confident that trail pheromone presence does not affect the perceived value of a food source in these ants.

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Irrational risk aversion in ants is driven by perceptual mechanisms

Cited by 4 publications

References 57 publications

Labeling effect in insects: Cue associations influence perceived food value in ants (Lasius niger).

Labeling effect in insects: Cue associations influence perceived food value in ants (Lasius niger).

Very rapid multi-odour discrimination learning in the ant Lasius niger

Trail Pheromone Does Not Modulate Subjective Reward Evaluation in Lasius niger Ants

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