AA << present a novel experimental design that aims at measuring the extent to which animal subjects are sensitive to rare and extreme events and, in addition, how rats respond to those very unfrequent events under radical uncertainty. (..) the novelty of (AA) design is that it provides two direct measures that help interpreting (..) behavioral data: Total Sensitivity to Rare and Extreme Events, and One-sided Sensitivity to Rare and Extreme Events with Black-Swan Avoidance/Jackpot-Seeking behaviors as limiting cases. >>️
<< First, most rats (..) can be grouped into a moderate to high Total Sensitivity group. This means that most rats diversify their choices across options in such a way that they more often rely on convex ones than on concave ones overall. Therefore, they tend to seek extreme gains/Jackpots and to avoid extreme losses/ Black Swans. In addition, most rats (..) tend to exhibit Black Swan Avoidance, which indicates that, given Total Sensitivity, they tend to try more often to avoid Black Swans than to seek Jackpots. (AA) interpret such a behavior as significant aversion towards uncertainty about rare and extreme losses. >>️
<< all rats diversify their choices across a set of options, which is reminiscent of observed behaviors such as, for example, bet-hedging in animals and financial portfolio strategies used by humans >>
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<< results from similar experiments among different species might be of interest for the analysis of neurobiological substrates involved in decision-making and its evolutionary traits in the context of rare and extreme events. >>️
Mickael Degoulet, Louis-Matis Willem, et al. Decision-Making in Rats is Sensitive to Rare and Extreme Events: the Black Swan Avoidance. bioRxiv 10.1101/2021.11.01.466806v1. Nov 04, 2021.
Keywords: behav, game, decision-making, bet-hedging, trading, uncertainty, gain, loss, black swan
