These findings are consistent with previous studies suggesting that chimpanzees are unable to transition to a novel behaviour if they already are proficient at a productive strategy, but they differ in two important ways
2016
Key concepts
- conformity
- food reward
- social factor
- medium-value reward
- different reward
- social learning
- level trend
- food preference
- inedible token
- preferred food
- token type
- based observational learning’ model
- single strategy
- conservatism
- model chimpanzee
- social group
- high-value reward
- chimpanzee
- behavioural method
- new method
- model choice
- simple shift
- different food
- Pan troglodytes
- social dynamics
- food choice
- group relation
- factor apparent
- population level
Scholarcy highlights
- Chimpanzees remain fixed on a single strategy, even if a novel, more efficient, strategy is introduced
- Throughout the 10 h of the open diffusion test, chimpanzees showed a strong interest in the actions of their groupmates and were classed as ‘observing’ if they were within 1 m, and oriented towards, another chimpanzee exchanging a token with the experimenter
- In the medium-value reward group, this remained true even after chimpanzees discovered that SS tokens gave them highly prized grapes, both through the observation of groupmates exchanging SS tokens and exchanging SS tokens themselves
- These findings are consistent with previous studies suggesting that chimpanzees are unable to transition to a novel behaviour if they already are proficient at a productive strategy, but they differ in two important ways
- The chimpanzees in the MR group stuck to the introduced method, despite the fact that it caused them to act against their previously expressed food preferences
- Over the 10 h, 404 of the 412 total token exchanges made by chimpanzees, excluding the model JO, utilized the CC token
- In contrast Whiten and colleagues proposed that chimpanzees are conforming to a group norm; choosing the option selected by their groupmates in order to be like them. We propose that such conformity, rather than conservatism, is a more likely explanation for the behaviour of the chimpanzees in the MR group that continued to exchange the less profitable CC tokens
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