Is the glass half empty or half full? Your answer to this simple question can tell us something about your mental state, whether your mindset is a rather optimistic or pessimistic one. Your answer will largely depend on your mood, which in turn reflects the sum of experience you made in the environment you live in or grew up in. If you experience these as rather negative, for you the glass will more likely look half empty than half full, and vice versa.
We can ask animals a similar question. For example by training fish to associate a colour with a positive reward (food) and another color with a no reward
(no food) and then measure the time each individual takes to explore an ambiguous color stimulus
(i.e, gray, if fish were trained on black and white) we can learn about their current mental state. The idea is that an individual that made more positive experiences will more likely be more optimistic and hence less hesitant to try this new ambiguous source.
In this project we use this method to explore how different standard housing conditions affect the mental state of guppies and potentially other fish too.
Are you interested in this project and want to do a thesis contributing to fish welfare? Contact Séverine Kotrschal