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Capuchin monkeys are not prosocial in an instrumental helping task

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Abstract

Comparative research can shed light on the evolutionary roots and cognitive underpinnings of prosocial behavior by revealing not only positive instances of prosocial motivations in other species, but also the boundary conditions of these motivations. To explore factors that may constrain prosocial behavior, we examined whether brown capuchins (Cebus apella), which demonstrate regard for the welfare of conspecifics in other contexts, would behave prosocially in a minimal-cost instrumental helping task. We observed that when given the opportunity to share tokens that allow a conspecific to obtain food from an apparatus, capuchins showed no regard for another individual’s welfare. Subjects transferred tokens to an adjacent chamber when the apparatus was present, but did so just as often when the chamber was empty as when there was a recipient present to obtain food. While capuchins are sensitive to others’ welfare in some contexts, the current results suggest that they do not spontaneously produce goal-specific helping actions on behalf of a conspecific. The lack of regard for others exhibited in this context provides insights into the factors that may constrain prosocial behavior in capuchins and other primate species.

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Notes

  1. Due to a camera hard drive error, eleven of these video recordings were unusable. These video files were distributed evenly across conditions, and performance on these trials did not differ systematically from performance on the remaining trials.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Jordan Comins, Elizabeth Spelke, Sally Boysen, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. We also thank Tanya Mayer, Mary Altonje, Camille Buchanan, Cora Mukerji, and Caroline Drucker for their help running these studies, and the members of the Comparative Cognition Laboratory at Yale University for valuable discussions about the experimental design. We thank the McDonnell Foundation Scholar Award and Yale University for their help funding this work. This research was conducted in compliance with federal laws of the United States of America and with the regulations of Yale University. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    A. E. Skerry

  2. Department of Psychology, Yale University, 2 Hillhouse Ave, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA

    M. Sheskin & L. R. Santos

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  1. A. E. Skerry
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  2. M. Sheskin
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  3. L. R. Santos
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Correspondence to L. R. Santos.

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Skerry, A.E., Sheskin, M. & Santos, L.R. Capuchin monkeys are not prosocial in an instrumental helping task. Anim Cogn 14, 647–654 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-011-0399-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-011-0399-0

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