RE: My Actifit Report Card: March 13 2026

Just curious have you heard of the experiments done by Carl Richter in the 1950's?

He studied exactly what you just mentioned.

He put rats in water and timed how long they would swim until they gave up and drowned. From that he got a baseline time. Very much like what you mentioned about the 5 hours seeming like forever if you don't know when you are getting out.

In the next set he put the rats in water then when they were about to give up he pulled them out, dried them off, and let them recover. Then he put them in water again.

What happened the second time? The second time the rats knew that there was a chance of rescue. They had hope. Instead of swimming for a few hours they swam for well over a day. (although you will have to look up the article for the exact details).

Now I'm not sure that I would have let the rats drown and would have just been happy rescuing them to figure out the time until failure with and without letting them die but that was in the 1950's. Test are actually still being done like that to see the effects of hope and you can see one here

Anyways, have a great day and always hold onto hope, even when things get tough.