Saskia Sperfeld

Project: Influence of personality and experience on emotional decision-making in Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus)

The emotions of animals are increasingly becoming the focus of public attention, as they represent a key to improving their quality of life. However, understanding them remains a challenge. Emotions and affective states are shaped not only by automatic reactions, but also by cognitive evaluations, i.e. subjective interpretations. This means that factors such as an animal's personality and previous experiences can influence how it feels in different situations. We investigate the effects of this cognitive evaluation of emotions in Mongolian gerbils (Meriones unguiculatus). In order to assess their individual affective states, we use the so-called judgment bias task. The animals learn to discriminate a positive stimulus on a touchscreen from a less positive stimulus and to react accordingly. Subsequently, they are presented with an unfamiliar ambivalent stimulus. Their reaction allows us to assess whether an animal is “optimistic” (shows the positive reaction) or “pessimistic” (shows the less positive reaction). These results are in turn linked to the assessment of their personality and acoustic behavior in order to find out how individual behavior and cognitive assessments influence the emotions of animals.