Chimps Are Less Susceptible to Peer Pressure Than Humans en.paperblog/chimps-are-less-susceptible-to-peer-pressure-than-humans-611113/ Human success stems from our social groups. By working together we can achieve more than we ever could hope to individually. In fact, the benefits of group life are so profound that they’ve shaped the course of our biological evolution. Our large brains, for example, evolved in part to help us remember lots of people and relationships, allowing us to live in bigger and better groups . Group life has also left its evolutionary mark on our psychology as well. Humans are very susceptible to peer pressure and the watchful eyes of others. This vulnerability to peer pressure is so strong that even cartoons of eyes watching us can make us less likely to cheat. In fact, images of eyes reduce the level of cheating even more than a strongly worded sign saying “don’t cheat.” Carefully placed eyes can even reduce the rate at which people litter, increase the likelihood they’ll leave the correct amount of money for their purchases in an unsupervised shop and increase the rate at which they follow recycling rules. But what’s perhaps most interesting is that people in these experiments don’t report even noticing the eyes, or feeling under extra pressure. This is all going on at a subconscious level. The eyes say “subscribe to EvoAnth” openclipart.lynms.edu.hk/clipart/sven222/sven222_Cartoon_Eyes.svg In short, those who behaved correctly when being watched by other members of their group flourished as they weren’t being thrown out of groups for being nasty. This spread this trait throughout the population through natural selection until we all had an innate, subconscious response to seeing eyes, even if they were cartoon, that makes us more likely to follow the rules. Chimps are our closest living relatives and also live in large complex groups. These groups also appear to have shaped their evolutionary history and so, like humans, they’re vulnerable to peer pressure and so are less likely to misbehave when being watched by others. For example, low ranking chimps are less likely to try and take food if being watched by others in their group. But are they as susceptible to peer pressure as humans? Are images enough to make them follow the rules? To test this, scientists created a similar experiment to the ones used in humans. They presented a chimp with some peanuts that, by rights, should belong to the dominant male. They then either put up a picture of another chimp or a neutral image and watched to see if the chimps would take the food anyway. m5.paperblog/i/61/611113/chimps-are-less-susceptible-to-peer-pressure--L-Hy1aRW.jpeg Chimps were either presented with the face of another chimp (top), or the freaky muddled up face (bottom) Unlike humans, chimps took the food in every test; even when shown an image of another chimps. Low ranking chimps tended to hesitate a bit when the face of another chimp was visible, but still ate the dominant male’s peanuts! Clearly chimpanzees are pure evil, the blankness of their fur matched only by the blackness of their hearts. It also indicates that, unlike in humans, their susceptibility to peer pressure is not strong enough for them to be influenced by mere images of rule enforcers (Nettle et al., 2013). This means that they hyper-susceptibility seen in humans evolved at some point within the last 7 million years since we split from chimps. We can probably narrow this down to within the last 2 million years, as it’s only since then that our social groups have become larger and more complex than chimps (Dunbar, 1993). Some may count it as a victory for those damn dirty apes that they’re capable of figuring out a picture isn’t real and thus can’t hurt them if they misbehave. On the other hand I can’t help wonder if the ease with which people can be bullied into behaving is one of the reasons our society has been so successful. - Chimps ignore watching eyes Nature 502, 9 (03 October 2013) doi:10.1038/502009e nature/nature/journal/v502/n7469/full/502009e.html Animal Behaviour Unlike humans, chimpanzees do not alter their behaviour significantly when eyes are gazing down on them. References 1. Dunbar, R. 1993. Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 16: 681-735 Coevolution of neocortical size, group size and language in humans Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 16, No. 04. (November 1993), pp. 681-694, doi:10.1017/s0140525x00032325 Key: citeulike:6732750 citeulike.org/user/dartar/article/6732750 uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/1993/dunbar1993a.pdf Abstract Group size covaries with relative neocortical volume in nonhuman primates. This regression equation predicts a group size for modern humans very similar to that for hunter-gatherer and traditional horticulturalist societies. Similar group sizes are found in other contemporary and historical societies. Nonhuman primates maintain group cohesion through social grooming; among the Old World monkeys and apes, social grooming time is linearly related to group size. Maintaining stability of human-sized groups by grooming alone would make intolerable time demands. It is therefore suggested (1) that the evolution of large groups in the human lineage depended on developing a more efficient method for time-sharing the processes of social bonding and (2) that language uniquely fulfills this requirement. Data on the size of conversational and other small interacting groups of humans accord with the predicted relative efficiency of conversation compared to grooming as a bonding process. In human conversations about 60% of time is spent gossiping about relationships and personal experiences. Language may accordingly have evolved to allow individuals to learn about the behavioural characteristics of other group members more rapidly than was feasible by direct observation alone. 2. Nettle, D., Cronin, K. A., & Bateson, M. (2013). Responses of chimpanzees to cues of conspecific observation. Animal Behaviour. Responses of chimpanzees to cues of conspecific observation Anim Behav. 2013 September; 86(3): 595–602. doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2013.06.015 ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3763378/ Abstract Recent evidence has shown that humans are remarkably sensitive to artificial cues of conspecific observation when making decisions with potential social consequences. Whether similar effects are found in other great apes has not yet been investigated. We carried out two experiments in which individual chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes, took items of food from an array in the presence of either an image of a large conspecific face or a scrambled control image. In experiment 1 we compared three versions of the face image varying in size and the amount of the face displayed. In experiment 2 we compared a fourth variant of the image with more prominent coloured eyes displayed closer to the focal chimpanzee. The chimpanzees did not look at the face images significantly more than at the control images in either experiment. Although there were trends for some individuals in each experiment to be slower to take high-value food items in the face conditions, these were not consistent or robust. We suggest that the extreme human sensitivity to cues of potential conspecific observation may not be shared with chimpanzees.
Posted on: Sat, 05 Oct 2013 13:59:57 +0000
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