What would you do if you were stranded at sea in a small inflatable raft with little hope of survival? What differentiates the person who gives up immediatley from the one who fights to the end?

In 1957 an experiment was done at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine by renowned psychobiology researcher, Curt Richter in which he was testing the effect of water temperature on endurance. A dozen rats were placed in individual jars with varying degrees of temperature and the rodents were placed in the position whereby they had to sink or swim. It was found that even when the temperatures were the same, some rats would succumb within 15 minutes while others would hold on and swim for 60 hours until they were just too tired to continue. This led to the belief that the rats were acting on different convictions and some were “choosing” to fight to the end.

A follow-up experiment was done whereby rats were placed in the jars for several minutes and then saved and returned to their cages. This was done multiple times before giving them the final “sink or swim” test. This time all the rats held on as long as possible and swam on average longer than 60 hours before succumbing to exhaustion and drowning. This illustrated that by giving them hope previously the rats seemed to have the belief that if they chose to hold on they would eventually be saved. Their perseverance would be rewarded. This is the same in the human race and similar psychology is often used whereby people are able to choose a hard road to follow, as long as they have hope. In his book “Adrift: Seventy-six Days lost at Sea”, Steven Callahan describes the choice that made him the longest lasting sole survivor to be adrift in the sea, following his boat capsizing in 1982, 800 miles west of the Canary Islands. “I have overcome almost certain death. I now have a choice: to pilot myself to a new life or to give up and watch myself die. I choose to kick as long as I can”.

In the second experiment, the experience of the rats had taught them that they had some control (however illusory as it was) over the outcome. This presumably lead them to think that a rescue was just around the corner. The rats, like Callahan, seemed to make a choice based on hope. 

This reminds me of a quote in Viktor Frankl’s amazing book about surviving Auschwitz, Man’s Search For Meaning: “Everything can be taken from man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstance, to choose one’s own way.”

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If you like this, you’ll like The Art of Choosing