Take That, Sandra and Elin!

Via Sullivan we get This experiment from Dan Arielly.

It seems that your particular monkeys are just doing what comes naturally.

Given a choice between spending a token to get their absolute favorite food or spending it to have a choice from a buffet of options, capuchin monkeys will opt for variety.

In fact, they'll even eat a less-preferred food from that buffet when the favorite food is on it. They choose variety for variety's sake.
...

The implications of this simple experiment shed some light on consumer behavior, Ariely said. Earlier work on variety-seeking has found that people eat 43 percent more M&M candies when there are 10 colors in the bowl instead of just seven. "People choose variety for variety's sake," Ariely said. "They often choose things they don't even like as well just for the variety. We knew about this, so the interesting thing was to figure out how basic it is."

Pretty basic, apparently...

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