Faced with an impossible puzzle, lab monkeys in a recent experiment showed unflappable resolve: They continued to guess what they thought must be the correct responses, even when rewards were doled out at random or in ways meant to disincentivize the animals from sticking to their guns. In short, the monkeys’ spuriously learned convictions—their seeming insistence that there must be a structure and solution to an unsolvable puzzle—outweighed their desire to maximize rewards during the experiment.
The study, published in PNAS, suggests that the monkeys create internal representations and assumptions about how to solve a puzzle or address a task that supersede the usual drivers of lab behavior, such as rewards. And even when the puzzle at hand was impossible by design, that internally conjured structure kept the animals guessing long after the Columbia University researchers behind the experiment thought they’d give up. The study suggests that the monkeys did ...
