Recent studies have shown that chimpanzees possess many of the cognitive prerequisites necessary for humanlike collaboration. Cognitive abilities, however, might not be all that differs between chimpanzees and humans when it comes to cooperation.
Researchers from the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the MPI for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen have now discovered that when all else is equal, human children prefer to work together in solving a problem, rather than solve it on their own.
Chimpanzees, on the other hand, show no such preference according to a study of 3-year-old German kindergarteners and semi-free ranging chimpanzees, in which the children and chimps could choose between a collaborative and a non-collaboration problem-solving approach.
The research team presented 3-year-old German children and chimpanzees living in a Congo Republic sanctuary with a task that they could perform on their own or with a partner.
Specifically, they could either pull two ends of a rope themselves in order to get a food reward or they could pull one end while a companion pulled the other.
The task was carefully controlled to ensure there were no obvious incentives for the children or chimpanzees to choose one strategy over the other. "In such a highly controlled situation, children showed a preference to cooperate; chimpanzees did not," Haun points out.
The children cooperated more than 78 percent of the time compared to about 58 percent for the chimpanzees.
These statistics show that the children actively chose to work together, while chimps appeared to choose between their two options randomly.
"Our findings suggest that behavioral differences between humans and other species might be rooted in apparently small motivational differences," says Haun.
Children, not chimps, prefer collaboration: Humans like to work together in solving tasks - chimps don't
Researchers from the MPI for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig and the MPI for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen have now discovered that when all else is equal, human children prefer to work together in solving a problem, rather than solve it on their own.
Chimpanzees, on the other hand, show no such preference according to a study of 3-year-old German kindergarteners and semi-free ranging chimpanzees, in which the children and chimps could choose between a collaborative and a non-collaboration problem-solving approach.
The research team presented 3-year-old German children and chimpanzees living in a Congo Republic sanctuary with a task that they could perform on their own or with a partner.
Specifically, they could either pull two ends of a rope themselves in order to get a food reward or they could pull one end while a companion pulled the other.
The task was carefully controlled to ensure there were no obvious incentives for the children or chimpanzees to choose one strategy over the other. "In such a highly controlled situation, children showed a preference to cooperate; chimpanzees did not," Haun points out.
The children cooperated more than 78 percent of the time compared to about 58 percent for the chimpanzees.
These statistics show that the children actively chose to work together, while chimps appeared to choose between their two options randomly.
"Our findings suggest that behavioral differences between humans and other species might be rooted in apparently small motivational differences," says Haun.
Children, not chimps, prefer collaboration: Humans like to work together in solving tasks - chimps don't
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