Human children but not chimpanzees make irrational decisions driven by social comparison.

ABSTRACT: Human evolutionary success is often argued to be rooted in specialized social skills and motivations that result in more prosocial, rational and cooperative decisions. One manifestation of human ultra-sociality is the tendency to engage in social comparison. While social comparison studies typically focus on cooperative behaviour and emphasize concern for fairness and equality, here we investigate the competitive dimension of social comparison: a preference for getting more than others, expressed in a willingness to maximize relative payoff at the cost of absolute payoff. Chimpanzees and human children (5-6- and 9-10-year-olds) could decide between an option that maximized their absolute payoff (but put their partner at an advantage) and an option that maximized their relative payoff (but

SUBMITTER: Herrmann E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6367165 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature