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Affective States, Motivation, and Prosocial Behaviour in Primates

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Evolution of Primate Social Cognition

Part of the book series: Interdisciplinary Evolution Research ((IDER,volume 5))

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Abstract

Humans regularly help others upon seeing them in trouble, often almost impulsively. Help may be given even to strangers or to different species, with no return expected. Studies have reported that not only humans but also non-human primates show prosocial behaviours, such as helping and cooperation, in both natural and captive settings. Some researchers suggest that these behaviours relate to a sense of fairness and an ability to empathize. However, it is still not clear what kinds of affective states and motivation non-human species have and how they are involved in prosocial behaviours. In this chapter, we introduce our studies on cooperative behaviour, food sharing, and third-party evaluation in captive tufted capuchin monkeys (Sapajus apella), a New World monkey species. These studies demonstrated that the dominant monkeys behave prosocially towards subordinate monkeys, that capuchins are sensitive to partners’ efforts and rewards, and that they refuse food from humans who show anti-social behaviour towards others. From these results, we propose that advantageous inequality aversion may promote prosocial behaviour only towards subordinates and that empathy may not be important in food contexts.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for constructive comments and collaboration during these projects to Dr. James R. Anderson and Dr. Ayaka Takimoto. We also thank Minori Arahori, Benoit Bucher, and Risa Nagasawa for collaborating on projects. All our studies were supported by the Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research Nos. 20220004, 25240020, and 15K12047 to KF and Nos. 21700289 to HK.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan

    Hika Kuroshima & Kazuo Fujita

Authors
  1. Hika Kuroshima
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  2. Kazuo Fujita
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Georg-August-University Goettingen, Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Göttingen, Germany

    Laura Desirèe Di Paolo

  2. Department of Environmental Biology, SapienzĂ  UniversitĂ  di Roma, Rome, Italy

    Fabio Di Vincenzo

  3. Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, MI, USA

    Francesca De Petrillo

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Kuroshima, H., Fujita, K. (2018). Affective States, Motivation, and Prosocial Behaviour in Primates. In: Di Paolo, L.D., Di Vincenzo, F., De Petrillo, F. (eds) Evolution of Primate Social Cognition. Interdisciplinary Evolution Research, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93776-2_3

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