Journal
ANIMAL COGNITION
Volume 12, Issue 4, Pages 587-597Publisher
SPRINGER HEIDELBERG
DOI: 10.1007/s10071-009-0218-z
Keywords
Chimpanzee; Pan troglodytes; Reciprocity; Prosocial behavior; Other-regarding behavior
Categories
Funding
- MacArthur Foundation Preferences Network
- NSF [SES 0729244]
- NIH Institutional Research and Academic Career Development [K12 GM0068005]
- NIH/NCRR [U42-RR015090]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Chimpanzees provide help to unrelated individuals in a broad range of situations. The pattern of helping within pairs suggests that contingent reciprocity may have been an important mechanism in the evolution of altruism in chimpanzees. However, correlational analyses of the cumulative pattern of interactions over time do not demonstrate that helping is contingent upon previous acts of altruism, as required by the theory of reciprocal altruism. Experimental studies provide a controlled approach to examine the importance of contingency in helping interactions. In this study, we evaluated whether chimpanzees would be more likely to provide food to a social partner from their home group if their partner had previously provided food for them. The chimpanzees manipulated a barpull apparatus in which actors could deliver rewards either to themselves and their partners or only to themselves. Our findings indicate that the chimpanzees' responses were not consistently influenced by the behavior of their partners in previous rounds. Only one of the 11 dyads that we tested demonstrated positive reciprocity. We conclude that contingent reciprocity does not spontaneously arise in experimental settings, despite the fact that patterns of behavior in the field indicate that individuals cooperate preferentially with reciprocating partners.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available