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Animal behaviour

Cognitive bias and affective state

Nature volume 427, page 312 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

Information processing by humans can be biased by their emotions — for example, anxious and depressed people tend to make negative judgements about events and to interpret ambiguous stimuli unfavourably1,2,3,4. Here we show that such a 'pessimistic' response bias can also be measured in rats that are housed in unpredictable conditions5,6. Our findings indicate that cognitive bias can be used as an indicator of affective state in animals, which should facilitate progress in animal-welfare studies.

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Figure 1: Mean (±1 s.e.) responses to tones during 10 daily 30-min test sessions for male Lister hooded rats housed under 'predictable' (open circles, n = 4) and 'unpredictable' (filled circles, n = 5) conditions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Veterinary Science, Centre for Behavioural Biology, University of Bristol, Langford House, Langford, BS40 5DU, UK

    Emma J. Harding, Elizabeth S. Paul & Michael Mendl

Authors
  1. Emma J. Harding
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  2. Elizabeth S. Paul
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  3. Michael Mendl
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael Mendl.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Harding, E., Paul, E. & Mendl, M. Cognitive bias and affective state. Nature 427, 312 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/427312a

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