Dataset Information

Give what you get: capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-year-old children pay forward positive and negative outcomes to conspecifics.

ABSTRACT: The breadth of human generosity is unparalleled in the natural world, and much research has explored the mechanisms underlying and motivating human prosocial behavior. Recent work has focused on the spread of prosocial behavior within groups through paying-it-forward, a case of human prosociality in which a recipient of generosity pays a good deed forward to a third individual, rather than back to the original source of generosity. While research shows that human adults do indeed pay forward generosity, little is known about the origins of this behavior. Here, we show that both capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-year-old children pay forward positive and negative outcomes in an identical testing paradigm. These results suggest that a cognitively simple mechanism present early in phylogeny and ontogeny leads to paying forward positive, as well as negative, outcomes.

SUBMITTER: Leimgruber KL

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3906089 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Give what you get: capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-year-old children pay forward positive and negative outcomes to conspecifics.

Leimgruber Kristin L KL Ward Adrian F AF Widness Jane J Norton Michael I MI Olson Kristina R KR Gray Kurt K Santos Laurie R LR

PloS one 20140129 1

The breadth of human generosity is unparalleled in the natural world, and much research has explored the mechanisms underlying and motivating human prosocial behavior. Recent work has focused on the spread of prosocial behavior within groups through paying-it-forward, a case of human prosociality in which a recipient of generosity pays a good deed forward to a third individual, rather than back to the original source of generosity. While research shows that human adults do indeed pay forward gen ...[more]

PMID: 24489830

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Project description:BackgroundCan non-human animals comprehend and employ symbols? The most convincing empirical evidence comes from language-trained apes, but little is known about this ability in monkeys. Tokens can be regarded as symbols since they are inherently non-valuable objects that acquire an arbitrarily assigned value upon exchange with an experimenter. Recent evidence suggested that capuchin monkeys, which diverged from the human lineage 35 million years ago, can estimate, represent and combine token quantities. A fundamental and open question is whether monkeys can reason about symbols in ways similar to how they reason about real objects.Methodology/principal findingsHere we examined this broad question in the context of economic choice behavior. Specifically, we assessed whether, in a symbolic context, capuchins' preferences satisfy transitivity--a fundamental trait of rational decision-making. Given three options A, B and C, transitivity holds true if A > or = B, B > or = C and A > or = C (where > or = indicates preference). In this study, we trained monkeys to exchange three types of tokens for three different foods. We then compared choices monkeys made between different types of tokens with choices monkeys made between the foods. Qualitatively, capuchins' preferences revealed by the way of tokens were similar to those measured with the actual foods. In particular, when choosing between tokens, monkeys displayed strict economic preferences and their choices satisfied transitivity. Quantitatively, however, values measured by the way of tokens differed systematically from those measured with the actual foods. In particular, for any pair of foods, the relative value of the preferred food increased when monkeys chose between the corresponding tokens.Conclusions/significanceThese results indicate that indeed capuchins are capable of treating tokens as symbols. However, as they do so, capuchins experience the cognitive burdens imposed by symbolic representation.

Dataset Information

Give what you get: capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-year-old children pay forward positive and negative outcomes to conspecifics.

Publications

Give what you get: capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-year-old children pay forward positive and negative outcomes to conspecifics.

Similar Datasets

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