Social comparison mediates chimpanzees' responses to loss, not frustration.

ABSTRACT: Why do chimpanzees react when their partner gets a better deal than them? Do they note the inequity or do their responses reflect frustration in response to unattainable rewards? To tease apart inequity and contrast, we tested chimpanzees in a series of conditions that created loss through individual contrast, through inequity, or by both. Chimpanzees were tested in four social and two individual conditions in which they received food rewards in return for exchanging tokens with an experimenter. In conditions designed to create individual contrast, after completing an exchange, the chimpanzees were given a relatively less-preferred reward than the one they were previously shown. The chimpanzees' willingness to accept the less-preferred rewards was independent of previously offered foods in

SUBMITTER: Hopper LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4676562 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature