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A group of six chimpanzees were seen using touchscreens at a facility in Kyoto. The animals performed better on more difficult activities while under observation but poorly on less challenging ones.
A recent study found that, similar to humans, chimpanzees perform better when others are watching them while they work.
The long-thought-to-be-human audience effect—in which one’s behaviour changes when they perceive someone else is watching—may be present in great apes, according to a Japanese research team.
The discovery that chimpanzees are influenced in their work performance by audience members—and by humans regardless—was quite shocking, according to Christen Lin of Japan’s 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.”
Six chimps from Kyoto University’s Centre for the Evolutionary Origins of Human Behaviour were observed performing touchscreen tasks during hundreds of video sessions that spanned six years.
As the number of observers rose, the animals showed considerable improvement in their performance on the most challenging trials.
However, chimpanzees’ performance declined as the number of observers increased, even when the tasks in question were very simple.
Even for humans, the researchers didn’t have an explanation for these audience-related behaviors. However, they did note that being viewed “may influence the perception of reward, cognitive load, and concentration” in their conclusion.
The data suggest that the audience effect “may not be quite so specific to our species,” according to Shinya Yamamoto, who is also from Kyoto University.
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Individual traits “are a fundamental component of how our communities are primarily predicated on reputation,” he stated.
“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,” according to him.
According to the scientists, additional research is necessary to ascertain the origins of the feature.
