By Stephen Beech via SWNS
Chimps are “show-offs” who perform better at complicated computer tasks when they have an audience, according to new research.
But the primates performed worse at the easiest task when being watched, say scientists.
Researchers at Kyoto University in Japan discovered that having an audience watching can change their performance for better or worse, just like humans.
The research team say their findings, published in the journal iScience, suggest that the “audience effect” predates the development of reputation-based human societies.
Study co-author Christen Lin said: “It was very surprising to find that chimpanzees are affected in their task performance by audience members, and by human audience members nonetheless.
“One might not expect a chimp to particularly care if another species is watching them perform a task, but the fact that they seem to be affected by human audiences even depending on the difficulty of the task suggests that this relationship is more complex than we would have initially expected.”
The research team wanted to find out if the audience effect – often attributed in humans to reputation management – might also exist in a non-human primate.
They already knew that humans pay attention to who is watching them, sometimes even subconsciously, in ways that affect their performance.
While chimps live in hierarchical societies, it wasn’t clear to what extent they, too, might be influenced by others watching them.
Study co-author Dr. Akiho Muramatsu said: “Our study site is special in that chimpanzees frequently interact with and even enjoy the company of humans here, participating almost daily in various touch screen experiments for food rewards.
“As such, we saw the opportunity to not only explore potential similarities in audience-related effects but also to do so in the context of chimps that share unique bonds with humans.”
The research team made the discovery after analysing thousands of sessions in which chimps completed a touch screen task over six years.
They found in three different number-based tasks that chimps performed better on the most difficult task as the number of experimenters watching them increased.
But, in contrast, they also found that, for the easiest task, chimpanzees performed worse when being watched by more experimenters or other familiar people.
The team noted that it remains unclear what specific mechanisms underlie the audience-related effects, even for humans.
They suggest that further research in non-human apes may offer more insight into how the trait evolved.
Co-author Dr. Shinya Yamamoto said: “Our findings suggest that how much humans care about witnesses and audience members may not be quite so specific to our species.”
He added: “These characteristics are a core part of how our societies are largely based on reputation, and if chimpanzees also pay special attention towards audience members while they perform their tasks, it stands to reason that these audience-based characteristics could have evolved before reputation-based societies emerged in our great ape lineage.”
