Human performance, whether artistic, academic, social, or other fields, often affected Depending on the size of the crowd around. But we’re not the only ones adapting to our audience. Recent research shows that some of our closest animals exhibit similar crowd-induced performance enhancements and limitations depending on crowd size. New evidence shows that these innate psychological influences long predate the evolution of human cultures that value reputation and authority.
Although it is already well known that chimpanzees organize hierarchical societies, experts have been divided over the extent to which their peers influence chimpanzees’ emotions, behavior, and performance abilities. Ta. However, according to a study published Nov. 8 in the journal isciencein detail, even chimpanzees appear to be susceptible to “audience effects” in certain social situations.
[Related: Chimp conversations can take on human-like chaos.]
To assess how this effect manifests itself in chimpanzees, researchers at Kyoto University in Japan relied on the relatively unique environment of their research facility. There, chimpanzees interact with humans almost daily through touchscreen-based food reward experiments. To do this, the researchers gave six chimpanzees three different number-based touchscreen tasks that varied in complexity and cognitive requirements.
In the first task, chimpanzees had to touch the numbers 1 to 19 in sequence after the numbers appeared next to each other on a screen. In the second game, the animals also had to select numbers in sequence, but only after the numbers appeared in separate locations on the screen. For task 3, the most difficult, the chimpanzees were asked to select the numbers in sequence again. But this time, when the primate pressed one number, all the others disappeared, so the primate had to quickly memorize its location in real time. The researchers then analyzed each primate’s performance results collected from thousands of sessions over six years of testing.
Looking at the data, we identified two particular trends. Chimpanzees’ average performance improved by a “statistically significant” amount on the most difficult tasks by increasing the number of study companions. But for the easiest tasks, the animals performed worse when they knew more chimpanzees or familiar humans were standing nearby.
“Our findings suggest that how much humans care about witnesses and audiences may not be so unique to our species,” said study co-author Japan. Shinya Yamamoto of Kyoto University said in a statement Friday. “… [I]If chimpanzees also pay special attention to audiences when performing tasks, these audience-based traits may have evolved before reputation-based societies emerged in our great ape lineage. It is natural that there is. ”
Kristen Lin, co-author of the study, said that while chimpanzees may not care if other species watch them perform tasks, “depending on the difficulty of the task, Even so, the fact that chimpanzees appear to be influenced by human audiences suggests this relationship.” It’s more complicated than we originally expected. ”
The researchers noted that it is not yet clear what neurological mechanisms drive these behavioral changes in both primates and humans. Still, they hope that further research on our close relatives, the great apes, may one day help better explain common experiences across these species.
