Risk should be objectively defined: reply to Zentall and Smith
Résumé
Zentall and Smith (2014) have published a
comment on Pele´ and Sueur (Anim Cogn 16:543–556,
2013) in which they raise two issues, one about the
definition of risk and a second concerning the optimality of
decisions. When making a choice, subjects are faced not
only with several possible alternatives but also with the risk
of opting for an unsuitable choice which depends on several
variables (context, internal state, knowledge and perception).
Although it is true that animals might learn about
their environment and adapt their decisions to the context
and to their experience, strong constraints make some behavioural
traits stable over individual lifetime and even
generations. We therefore consider that experience has
limited impact on the variability of temporal discounting.
These behavioural traits make the difference between
perceived and actual risk. If the perceived risk strongly
differs from the actual risk, a decision should be considered
as suboptimal. If we want to lead individual and collective
cognition to a common decision science, it is crucial to use
the same definitions for terms implied in decision-making