越是辛苦努力得到的成功人越觉其珍贵,也越懂珍惜。对于可爱的实验小鼠而言也是如此。
" I' K% i4 L) A& r' `; T Maybe your dad said, “The harder you work for something, the more you’ll appreciate it.” Well, father really did know best. Because a new study finds that the harder mice have to work for a treat, the better it tastes. The research appears in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. [Alexander Johnson and Michela Gallagher, "Greater effort boosts the affective taste properties of food"]/ _$ O8 l- z \$ I
8 b* ^8 y" \* D2 A, t3 _" K Mice were trained to push levers to get either of two rewards. Press one lever, out comes a drop of sugar water. Press the other and they get a drop of different tasting sugar water., }7 W" X& y) Q; x/ g' H3 y
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Then things got interesting. For one of the treats, scientists gradually increased the amount of effort required for the payoff—from one lever-press to five, then 10, then 15. So by the end of the session, one type of sugar water cost 15 times more effort than the other.
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' i$ F1 S/ w" c. I# M3 r# p# A The mice then retired to their home cage where both treats were freely available. And they showed a strong preference for whichever reward they’d worked harder to obtain. Based on how fast the mice sipped, they appeared to find the costlier sugar water more tasty.2 |$ {- L4 C4 p- H2 b1 r2 w0 K
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Which makes evolutionary sense. An animal wouldn’t survive if a little hard work left a bitter taste in its mouth. |