A positive-thinking bison, oryx or black bear has a better chance of a full belly and long-term health than a neutral-thinking or pessimistic one according to newly published research from Tal Avgar from the department of Wildland Resources and Oded Berger-Tal from the Ben-Gurion University of Negev, Israel. The team developed a model for animal foraging that considered "valence-dependent optimism bias"—a lopsided learning process in which information about bad outcomes is discounted or ignored. The model showed that when faced with decisions, the foraging animals that gave mental weight to positive outcomes had an on-the-ground caloric advantage.
