How chimpanzees cooperate in a competitive world

Abstract

Our species is routinely depicted as unique in its ability to achieve cooperation, whereas our closest relative, the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), is often characterized as overly competitive. Human cooperation is assisted by the cost attached to competitive tendencies through enforcement mechanisms, such as punishment and partner choice. To examine if chimpanzees possess the same ability to mitigate competition, we set up a cooperative task in the presence of the entire group of 11 adults, which required two or three individuals to pull jointly to receive rewards. This opengroup set-up provided ample opportunity for competition (e.g., freeloading, displacements) and aggression. Despite this unique set-up and initial competitiveness, cooperation prevailed in the end, being at least five times as common as competition. The chimpanzees performed 3,565 cooperative acts while using a variety of enforcement mechanisms to overcome competition and freeloading, as measured by (attempted) thefts of rewards. These mechanisms included direct protest by the target, third-party punishment in which dominant individuals intervened against freeloaders, and partner choice. There was a marked difference between freeloading and displacement; freeloading tended to elicit withdrawal and third-party interventions, whereas displacements were met with a higher rate of direct retaliation. Humans have shown similar responses in controlled experiments, suggesting shared mechanisms across the primates to mitigate competition for the sake of cooperation.Pan troglodytes | freeloading | enforcement | punishment | partner choice

Preschool children and chimpanzees incur costs to watch punishment of antisocial others

“…Much less is known about how such 84 mechanisms might operate in one of our closest living relatives, the chimpanzee (but see [32][33][34][35] ).…”

Population-specific social dynamics in chimpanzees

“…For common marmosets, the emergence of population-specific behavioral styles (i.e., "group personality") was interpreted as a proximate mechanism to promote group-level cooperation, which in turn could boost individual-level fitness (3). The tendency for chimpanzees to cooperate in large parties (46,47), even for targeted competition with neighboring groups (48), supports a multilevel selection explanation of population-level variation in chimpanzee interaction patterns. However, multilevel selection is considered to be one of the main drivers of the unique extent of human cooperation and prosociality (42,45,49), which should thus warrant a thorough scrutiny of its potential role in the evolution of the chimpanzee phenotype.…”

Ethological observations of social behavior in the operating room

“…Analyses by surgical department revealed discrepancies that could be interpreted according to principles proposed by Gottman for interpersonal relationships (7). He observed that there is a healthy balance between conflict and cooperation, as also found in some nonhuman primate studies (8), thus implying that the goal of OR teams should not necessarily be the elimination of conflict but its containment. According to our study, one factor that may increase the risk of tensions, and should therefore be taken into future consideration, is the length of the procedure.…”

“…Conflict is an inevitable, sometimes constructive part of cooperation, and all organizations need to find a balance between conflict and cooperation (6). Gottman (7) has proposed that successful marriages are marked by a "magic" 5:1 ratio between positive and negative interactions, a ratio that also appears to mark successful cooperation in other primates (8). Nevertheless, conflict poses serious problems and liabilities.…”