"It was very surprising to find that chimpanzees are affected in their task performance by audience members, and by human audience members nonetheless!" said Christen Lin of Kyoto University. "One might not expect a chimp to particularly care if another species is watching them perform a task, but the fact that they seem to be affected by human audiences even depending on the difficulty of the task suggests that this relationship is more complex than we would have initially expected."
Led by researchers including Shinya Yamamoto and Akiho Muramatsu, the team explored whether the audience effect seen in human behavior could be present in non-human primates. Humans often modify their actions based on who is observing them, even subconsciously. While it is known that chimpanzees live within structured social hierarchies, how this might translate to their reactions to onlookers had not been fully understood.
"Our study site is special in that chimpanzees frequently interact with and even enjoy the company of humans here, participating almost daily in various touch screen experiments for food rewards," Muramatsu noted. "As such, we saw the opportunity to not only explore potential similarities in audience-related effects but also to do so in the context of chimps that share unique bonds with humans."
Analyzing data from thousands of touchscreen task sessions conducted over six years, the researchers found that chimpanzees excelled at more challenging tasks when the number of human observers increased. Conversely, for simpler tasks, the presence of more experimenters or familiar individuals led to poorer performance.
The underlying mechanisms behind these audience-related effects remain a topic for further exploration, even among humans. However, the researchers believe that studies focusing on non-human apes may shed light on how such traits evolved.
"Our findings suggest that how much humans care about witnesses and audience members may not be quite so specific to our species," Yamamoto added. "These characteristics are a core part of how our societies are largely based on reputation, and if chimpanzees also pay special attention towards audience members while they perform their tasks, it stands to reason that these audience-based characteristics could have evolved before reputation-based societies emerged in our great ape lineage."
Research Report:Audience presence influences cognitive task performance in chimpanzees
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