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Touch-screen-guided task reveals a prosocial choice tendency by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)

Humans help others even without direct benefit for themselves. However, the nature of altruistic (i.e., only the other benefits) and prosocial (i.e., self and other both benefit) behaviors in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, remains controversial. To address this further, we developed a...

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Autores principales: Mendonça, Renata S., Dahl, Christoph D., Carvalho, Susana, Matsuzawa, Tetsuro, Adachi, Ikuma
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6074756/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30083456
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5315
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author Mendonça, Renata S.
Dahl, Christoph D.
Carvalho, Susana
Matsuzawa, Tetsuro
Adachi, Ikuma
author_facet Mendonça, Renata S.
Dahl, Christoph D.
Carvalho, Susana
Matsuzawa, Tetsuro
Adachi, Ikuma
author_sort Mendonça, Renata S.
collection PubMed
description Humans help others even without direct benefit for themselves. However, the nature of altruistic (i.e., only the other benefits) and prosocial (i.e., self and other both benefit) behaviors in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, remains controversial. To address this further, we developed a touch-screen-guided task that allowed us to increase the number of trials for a thorough test of chimpanzees’ prosocial and altruistic tendencies. Mother-offspring dyads were tested in the same compartment; one was the actor while the other was the recipient. In Experiment 1, the actor chose among three options: prosocial, selfish (only the actor benefited) and altruistic. To better understand the nature of the chimpanzees’ choices and to improve experimental control, we conducted two additional experiments. Experiment 2 consisted of two-option choices interspersed with three-option choices, and in Experiment 3 the two-option choice were blocked across all trials. The results of Experiment 1 clearly showed that chimpanzees acted prosocially in the touch-screen-guided task, choosing the prosocial option on an average of 79% of choices. Five out of the six chimpanzees showed the preference to act prosocially against chance level. The preference for the prosocial option persisted when conditions were changed in Experiments 2 and 3. When only selfish and altruistic options were available in Experiments 2 and 3, chimpanzees preferred the selfish option. These results suggest that (1) most individuals understood the nature of the task and modified their behavior according to the available options, (2) five out of the six chimpanzees chose to act prosocially when they had the option to, and (3) offspring counterbalanced between altruistic and selfish, when given those two options perhaps to avoid suffering repercussions from the mother.
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spelling pubmed-60747562018-08-06 Touch-screen-guided task reveals a prosocial choice tendency by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) Mendonça, Renata S. Dahl, Christoph D. Carvalho, Susana Matsuzawa, Tetsuro Adachi, Ikuma PeerJ Animal Behavior Humans help others even without direct benefit for themselves. However, the nature of altruistic (i.e., only the other benefits) and prosocial (i.e., self and other both benefit) behaviors in our closest living relative, the chimpanzee, remains controversial. To address this further, we developed a touch-screen-guided task that allowed us to increase the number of trials for a thorough test of chimpanzees’ prosocial and altruistic tendencies. Mother-offspring dyads were tested in the same compartment; one was the actor while the other was the recipient. In Experiment 1, the actor chose among three options: prosocial, selfish (only the actor benefited) and altruistic. To better understand the nature of the chimpanzees’ choices and to improve experimental control, we conducted two additional experiments. Experiment 2 consisted of two-option choices interspersed with three-option choices, and in Experiment 3 the two-option choice were blocked across all trials. The results of Experiment 1 clearly showed that chimpanzees acted prosocially in the touch-screen-guided task, choosing the prosocial option on an average of 79% of choices. Five out of the six chimpanzees showed the preference to act prosocially against chance level. The preference for the prosocial option persisted when conditions were changed in Experiments 2 and 3. When only selfish and altruistic options were available in Experiments 2 and 3, chimpanzees preferred the selfish option. These results suggest that (1) most individuals understood the nature of the task and modified their behavior according to the available options, (2) five out of the six chimpanzees chose to act prosocially when they had the option to, and (3) offspring counterbalanced between altruistic and selfish, when given those two options perhaps to avoid suffering repercussions from the mother. PeerJ Inc. 2018-07-31 /pmc/articles/PMC6074756/ /pubmed/30083456 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5315 Text en ©2018 Mendonça et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Mendonça, Renata S.
Dahl, Christoph D.
Carvalho, Susana
Matsuzawa, Tetsuro
Adachi, Ikuma
Touch-screen-guided task reveals a prosocial choice tendency by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
title Touch-screen-guided task reveals a prosocial choice tendency by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
title_full Touch-screen-guided task reveals a prosocial choice tendency by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
title_fullStr Touch-screen-guided task reveals a prosocial choice tendency by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
title_full_unstemmed Touch-screen-guided task reveals a prosocial choice tendency by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
title_short Touch-screen-guided task reveals a prosocial choice tendency by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
title_sort touch-screen-guided task reveals a prosocial choice tendency by chimpanzees (pan troglodytes)
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6074756/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30083456
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5315
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