The presence of framing effects in rats

Abstract

Behavioral economics, the study of social cognitive and emotional biases to better understand economic decisions their affects, has been a widely researched domain. Prospect theory has now been widely used to explain behavior irrationalities that could not be explained with traditional theories of choice. Reference dependence is one of the major features of human decision making that has been shown to influence choice when decision makers are faced with alternatives. The aim of the study is to find how rats respond to two different alternatives when these alternatives are presented transparently and when framed. We have improved the design of the standard T-maze used for rats by introducing some changes in the T-maze. These changes allowed us not to use any stimuli other than the natural stimuli associated with the chocolate-ball cereals we have used in our experiment as primary reward. Our results confirm that for a very strict budget of only 7 trials the rats can completely differentiate between the two different alternatives presented to them as two different amounts of food. We have also showed that when the alternative as framed as a choice between two sure payoffs of the same magnitude but difference in the amount of reward actually presented for that alternative; rats exhibit reference dependent behavior by avoiding the arm that frames loss. We conclude on our results that rats are also sensitive to how alternatives are presented to them. Our results also show that rats try to maximize their outcomes not only on their final states but also on the basis of whether outcomes are presented as loss or gain from a reference point.