Michael Platt Monkeys Quotations

We found that they still preferred the risky target. Basically these monkeys really liked to gamble.

It seemed very, very similar to the experience of people who are compulsive gamblers, ... While it's always dangerous to anthropomorphize, it seemed as if these monkeys got a high out of getting a big reward that obliterated any memory of all the losses that they would experience following that big reward.

There was no rational reason why monkeys might prefer one of these options over the other because, according to the theory of expected value, they're identical.