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Do chimpanzees learn reputation by observation? Evidence from direct and indirect experience with generous and selfish strangers

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Abstract

Can chimpanzees learn the reputation of strangers indirectly by observation? Or are such stable behavioral attributions made exclusively by first-person interactions? To address this question, we let seven chimpanzees observe unfamiliar humans either consistently give (generous donor) or refuse to give (selfish donor) food to a familiar human recipient (Experiments 1 and 2) and a conspecific (Experiment 3). While chimpanzees did not initially prefer to beg for food from the generous donor (Experiment 1), after continued opportunities to observe the same behavioral exchanges, four chimpanzees developed a preference for gesturing to the generous donor (Experiment 2), and transferred this preference to novel unfamiliar donor pairs, significantly preferring to beg from the novel generous donors on the first opportunity to do so. In Experiment 3, four chimpanzees observed novel selfish and generous acts directed toward other chimpanzees by human experimenters. During the first half of testing, three chimpanzees exhibited a preference for the novel generous donor on the first trial. These results demonstrate that chimpanzees can infer the reputation of strangers by eavesdropping on third-party interactions.

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Notes

  1. In the animal behavior literature, ‘eavesdropping’ has been defined in terms of how individuals use ‘public information’ (Valone 2007). Our use of the term ‘eavesdropping’ in this paper is consistent with the definition of Parejo and Aviles (2007), “the behavior involving the extraction of information from signaling interactions between others” (81).

  2. In the cognitive and computer sciences, a ‘domain’ generally refers to a specific class of information. Fodor (1983), referred to mechanisms that operate on a specific domain as ‘modules.’ These modules are specialized (processing only certain types of information), fast and ‘encapsulated,’ meaning that they operate outside of conscious awareness and are not affected by learning. In contrast, here, we define the ability to make reputation judgments as an abstract social reasoning skill, meaning that judgments of reputation though social, are not limited to specific social contexts or information. Such judgments can thus be used flexibly in novel circumstances and require inferential reasoning; they may even be applied to non-social agents like computers or even vending machines with a bad ‘reputation’ of stealing your money. We do not believe that the claims of ‘reputation” in fish and birds (Amy and Leboucher 2007; Brosnan et al. 2003; Bshary and Grutter 2006; Grosenick et al. 2007; Paz-y-Miño et al. 2004; Rooney and Bradshaw 2006) meet this more stringent criterion.

  3. After all, we, as humans, often have grave difficulty initially discriminating between members of other species, even chimpanzees.

  4. However, see Jensen et al. (2006); Silk et al. (2005); Vonk et al. (2008) for results which suggest that chimpanzees are not prosocial and so unlikely to cooperate.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank S. F. Brosnan, F. deWaal, E. Fehr, and D. J. Povinelli, for their comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. We would also like to thank A. Rideaux, L. Loston, T. LaVergne and J. Reaux as well as all the volunteers that served as donors for their assistance throughout this project. This research was supported in part by a Centennial Fellowship from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to DJP and a Research Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to H.S. Terrace, J. Metcalfe and F. Subiaul. All studies were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee of the University of Louisiana, Lafayette.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Speech and Hearing Science, Mind, Brain and Evolution Cluster, The George Washington University, 2115 G Street, NW # 204, Washington, DC, 20001, USA

    Francys Subiaul

  2. University of Louisiana, Cognitive Evolution Group, New Iberia, LA, USA

    Francys Subiaul, Jennifer Vonk, Sanae Okamoto-Barth & Jochen Barth

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Coast, 730 East Beach Drive, Long Beach, MS, 39560, USA

    Jennifer Vonk

  4. Department of Cognitive Neuroscience, Maastricht University, Maastricht, Netherlands

    Sanae Okamoto-Barth & Jochen Barth

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  1. Francys Subiaul
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Correspondence to Francys Subiaul.

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Subiaul, F., Vonk, J., Okamoto-Barth, S. et al. Do chimpanzees learn reputation by observation? Evidence from direct and indirect experience with generous and selfish strangers. Anim Cogn 11, 611–623 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-008-0151-6

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