Chimpanzees are sensitive to social influences but they maintain their own strategy to solve a problem rather than conform to（符合） what the majority of group members are doing. However, chimpanzees do change their strategy when they can obtain greater rewards, MPI researchers found. The study was published in PLOS ONE on November 28, 2013. Chimpanzees are known for their curious nature. They show a rich palette（调色板） of learning behaviour, both individually and socially. But they are also rather hesitant（迟疑的） to abandon their personal preferences, even when that familiar behaviour becomes extremely ineffective. Under which circumstances would chimpanzees flexibly adjust their behaviour? Edwin van Leeuwen and colleagues from the MPI's for Psycholinguistics and Evolutionary¹ Anthropology² conducted a series of experiments in Germany and Zambia to answer this question.

 

The researchers studied 16 captive chimpanzees at the Wolfgang Kohler Primate³ Research Center in Germany (Leipzig) and 12 semi-wild chimpanzees at the Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage⁴ Trust, a sanctuary⁵ that houses more than a hundred chimpanzees under nearly natural conditions in the north-western part of Zambia. Chimpanzees were trained on two different vending⁶ machines. A minority of the group was made familiar with one machine and the majority of group members with the other machine. Wooden balls were thrown into their enclosure; the chimpanzees could insert these balls into the machines to receive one peanut for each ball.

 

Van Leeuwen and his colleagues first aimed to replicate⁷ previous research and looked whether the chimpanzees in the minority group would change their behaviour toward using the vending machine that the majority of group members used. However, neither the German nor the Zambian chimpanzees gave up their strategy to join the majority. In the second study, the profitability of the vending machines was changed so that the vending machine that the minority used became more profitable, now spitting out five rewards for every ball inserted. Over time, the majority chimpanzees observed that the minority chimpanzees received more peanuts for the same effort and all but one gradually switched to using this more profitable machine.

 

 

"Where chimpanzees do not readily change their behaviour under majority influences, they do change their behaviour when they can maximise their payoffs," Van Leeuwen says. "We conclude that chimpanzees may prefer persevering⁸ in successful and familiar strategies over adopting the equally effective strategy of the majority, but that chimpanzees find sufficient incentive⁹ in changing their behaviour when they can obtain higher rewards somewhere else." "So, it's peanuts over popularity" he jokingly adds.

 

The researchers emphasise¹⁰ that these results may be dependent upon the specific trade-offs that were created by the experimental design and that chimpanzees could act differently under the pressures of life in the wild. Van Leeuwen: "Conformity¹¹ could still be a process guiding chimpanzees' behaviour. Chimpanzee females, for instance, disperse¹² to other groups in the wild. For these females, it is of vital importance to integrate into the new group. Conformity to local (foraging) customs might help them to achieve this integration¹³."

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