Children, chimpanzees, and bonobos adjust the visibility of their actions for cooperators and competitors.

ABSTRACT: Chimpanzees and bonobos are highly capable of tracking other's mental states. It has been proposed, however, that in contrast to humans, chimpanzees are only able to do this in competitive interactions but this has rarely been directly tested. Here, pairs of chimpanzees or bonobos (Study 1) and 4-year-old children (Study 2) were presented with two almost identical tasks differing only regarding the social context. In the cooperation condition, players' interests were matched: they had to make corresponding choices to be mutually rewarded. To facilitate coordination, subjects should thus make their actions visible to their partner whose view was partially occluded. In the competition condition, players' interests were directly opposed: the partner tried to match the subject's choice but sub

SUBMITTER: Grueneisen S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5561202 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature