Toddlers and chimps follow their peers
April 13th, 2012 - 4:14 pm ICT by IANSBerlin, April 13 (IANS) What is common between toddlers and chimps? Both tend to copy actions of their peers.
“I think few people would have expected to find that two-year-olds are already influenced by the majority,” said Daniel Haun of the Max Planck Institutes for Evolutionary Anthropology and Psycholinguistics, the journal Current Biology reports.
Earlier studies revealed that children are sensitive to peer pressure already at preschool age. Researchers wanted to know whether the majority influences social learning at an even earlier age and in other primate species as well, according to a Max Planck statement.
Haun’s team built a box with three holes, each a different colour. The box delivered a treat only when a ball was dropped into one of those three, coloured holes.
Toddlers, chimps and orangutans unfamiliar with the box were then allowed to watch as four of their same-species peers interacted with the box. The majority of those peer demonstrators had been trained to favour one colour over the others.
When the two-year-old and chimpanzee observers got their turn, they tended to favour the hole favoured by their friends. That’s in contrast to orangutans, which chose the holes at random.
While the findings might leave some parents in dismay, majority rule probably does have its advantages, evolutionarily speaking.
“The tendency to acquire the behaviours of the majority has been posited as key to the transmission of relatively safe, reliable, and productive behavioral strategies,” Haun said.
- Great apes too make sophisticated decisions - Dec 30, 2011
- Chimps too nurture 'social traditions' - Aug 29, 2012
- Chimp mums 'mourn their dead infants' - Feb 01, 2011
- 'Promiscuous' chimps produce more sperm - Feb 17, 2011
- Our genome more closely related to orangutans than chimps - Jan 27, 2011
- Chimps likely to warn groups unaware of dangers - Dec 30, 2011
- Bonobo chimps like humans may be hardwired to shake their heads to say 'no' - May 06, 2010
- Chimps don't trade meat for sex - May 28, 2010
- Kids don't mind sharing after working together - Feb 13, 2011
- 'Energy efficient' orangutans need less food fuel than we do - Aug 03, 2010
- Why humans are more sensitive than chimps to certain viruses - Dec 17, 2010
- It's natural for girls to play with dolls and boys to like guns - Dec 21, 2010
- Chimps tend to remember the exact location of favourite fruit trees - Jun 09, 2009
- Just like humans, apes suffer self-doubt too - Apr 19, 2010
- Why chimps attack humans - Aug 12, 2010
Tags: behavioral strategies, behaviours, chimpanzee, chimps, current biology, demonstrators, dismay, evolutionary anthropology, favour, favoured, majority rule, max planck, max planck institutes, observers, orangutans, peers, preschool age, primate species, toddlers, two year olds