The Power of Hope: The drowning rats psychology experiment

In the fifties, when experiments of the kind no longer permissible today were still allowed, Curt Richter, a professor at Johns Hopkins university, did a famous psychology experiment using rats. As the World of Work Project website explains: "Curt’s experiments focused on how long it takes rats to die from drowning. He conducted his experiments by placing rats into buckets filled with water and seeing how long they survived. He introduced a range of variables into the experiment, that yielded some interested results." Some of those different variables were to examine why domesticated rats swam and swam and swam, while wild rats gave up swimming and died, often within only a few minutes. 

What makes the experiment noteworthy to me and why I'm writing about it is that, as Heartbeat Services' article Hope Floats explains: "In a follow-up experiment, as the rats started to give up and sink, he pulled the drowning rodents to safety, dried them off, gave them a brief period of rest only to put them right back into that same bucket. Here comes the amazing part – those same rats now swam for an average of 60 hours – YEP – that’s six with a zero or two and a half days."

When they were certain that they would drown, the rats gave up swimming within a few minutes. However, the promise of rescue gave the rats so much hope of another rescue that they swam and swam and swam. To me, this speaks to the power of hope (and faith, and resilience, and determination!) and what it does to living beings. Feeling like there is no way out, no way forward, or no rescue possible, we might give up. However, knowing that rescue is possible, knowing that things can get better and will improve because we've experienced the rescue or lived through a similar situation before, that gives us the power to keep going. 

Whether talking about rats swimming for more than two days waiting for that rescue, or human beings living through disappointment, loss or heartbreak and persevering because we know that the negativity or loss or disappointment or self-loathing or shame or any number of negative or not-all-that positive emotions we might be feeling or experiencing, they too will wane and as long as we keep swimming, keep going, keep moving, keep trying, we'll get to the other side of that dark tunnel and we will make it back to the light. We too will be rescued. Only in our case, the hand reaching out from above to 'rescue' us might not be a human hand belonging to a researcher, but instead one made up of hope, perseverance, resilience, knowledge, faith, positivity, family, friends, loved ones, experience and determination.

As humans, my experience is that we see ourselves as very different from other living beings. Often, we feel superior or as if we 'matter more' than other beings. We kill animals for their meat when other foods are available and we don't necessary need that much meat to survive and be healthy. As this experiment shows, we have used (and continue to use) animals as test subject, sometimes subjecting them to pain or torture in the interest of research and advancing our knowledge and understanding. Stories of animals, being abused and tortured by humans are sadly not nearly as rare as I'd like them to be. We may think of ourselves as better, more or superior, however in the case of the experiment with rats persevering, I say we have a lot to learn from the rats and should look to them as an example. If they can keep swimming for 2,5 days, then we too can keep going, keep working and keep moving forward. Let's swim on!