Drowning Rats Psychology Experiment: Resilience and the Power of Hope

In the 1950s, Curt Richter, a professor at Johns Hopkins, did a famous drowning rats psychology experiment. This experiment, though cruel, demonstrated the power of hope and resilience in overcoming difficult situations.

In a series of experiments that are fairly cruel and unpalatable, yet interesting in their findings, Curt Richter demonstrated that hope is a powerful factor in perseverance. 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.

Domesticated Rats

12 domesticated rats were used in Curt’s first set of experiments. The first of these rats initially swam around the surface, then dove to the bottom of the bucket and explored what was there for a while. It lasted a total of two minutes before it drowned.

Two of the other domesticated rats did roughly the same thing, and survived for roughly the same period of time.

The other nine domesticated rats though did something completely different. After an initial exploration, the predominantly spent their time and the surface. And the just kept swimming. They survived for literally days before eventually succumbing to exhaustion and drowning.

Wild Rats

The second set of experiments Curt undertook involved 34 wild rats. Wild rats are excellent swimmers, and these savage and aggressive ones had only recently been caught. Obviously, Curt expected them to fight hard for their survival.

Surprisingly though, this wasn’t the case at all. Despite their ferocity, fitness and swimming ability, not one of the 34 wild rats survived more than a few minutes.

The Role of Hope

Curt reflected on what caused some of the rats to give up and decided that hope a key factor in the willingness to struggle on. Where rats have perhaps been helped in the past and have hope of being saved, they will keep fighting in the believe that all is not lost. However, when they don’t have this prior experience, they will give up quickly.

In his own words he said: “The situation of these rats scarcely seems one demanding fight or flight — it is rather one of hopelessness… the rats are in a situation against which they have no defense… they seem literally to ‘give up.’”

With this in mind, Curt decided to experiment further.

Introducing Hope and Support

The last set of experiments that we’ll focus on were concerned with the impact that introducing hope would have on the perseverance of the rats in buckets. In these experiments Curt’s hypothesis was roughly that introducing hope to rats would increase their survival times.

To test his hypothesis Curt selected a new cohort of rats who were all similar to each other. Again, he introduced them into buckets and observed them as they progressed towards drowning. This time though, he noted the moment at which they gave up then, just before they died, he rescued them. He saved them, held them for a while and helped them recover.

He then placed them back into the buckets and started the experiments all over again. And he discovered that his hypothesis was right. When the rats were placed back into the water they swam and swam, for much longer than they had the first time they were placed in the buckets. The only thing that had changed was that they had been saved before, so had hope this time.

Curt wrote that “the rats quickly learn that the situation is not actually hopeless” and that “after elimination of hopelessness the rats do not die.”

What This May Mean For People

Humans and rats are very different beings, but there is still a belief that we can learn a lot from these experiments. Where individuals have hope, they have higher levels of perseverance. They will keep fighting when they feel these is a chance of success or rescue. When they don’t have hope, they won’t.

What This Means in the World of Work

From a work perspective, these findings can be taken to mean that people will remain resilient and will continue to persevere in the face of difficult situations, provided they have hope.

So, if they are rescued from time to time. If they are supported. If they believe the future will be a better place and if they feel others are there to help them, they may be able to drive themselves through difficult situations. The importance of believe here is similar to the importance of belief in the expectancy theory of motivation.

What this means for leaders is that people in your team will be strong and resilient, provided that you give them hope of a better future. If that hope is extinguished, your people will stop fighting for you.