Children, but not chimpanzees, prefer to collaborate
Open accessAbstract
Human societies are built on collaborative activities. Already from early childhood, human children are skillful and proficient collaborators. They recognize when they need help in solving a problem and actively recruit collaborators [1, 2]. The societies of other primates are also to some degree cooperative. Chimpanzees, for example, engage in a variety of cooperative activities such as border patrols, group hunting, and intra- and intergroup coalitionary behavior [3-5]. Recent studies have shown that chimpanzees possess many of the cognitive prerequisites necessary for human-like collaboration. Chimpanzees have been shown to recognize when they need help in solving a problem and to actively recruit good over bad collaborators [6, 7]. However, cognitive abilities might not be all that differs between chimpanzees and humans when it comes to cooperation. Another factor might be the motivation to engage in a cooperative activity. Here, we hypothesized that a key difference between human and chimpanzee collaboration-and so potentially a key mechanism in the evolution of human cooperation-is a simple preference for collaborating (versus acting alone) to obtain food. Our results supported this hypothesis, finding that whereas children strongly prefer to work together with another to obtain food, chimpanzees show no such preference.
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Toddlers strongly prefer collaboration over individual access to a reward.
“when given the choice to access a reward collaboratively or individually, toddlers strongly prefer collaboration [13]”
From The social motivation theory of autism (2012) · cites this paper as [13]
Human children, unlike chimpanzees, strongly prefer to engage in collaboration to forage food.
“unlike chimpanzees, human children strongly prefer to engage in collaboration to forage food [13]”
From The social motivation theory of autism (2012) · cites this paper as [13]
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- Authors
- Rekers, Y., Haun, D. B. M., & Tomasello, M.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (DE)
- Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Rekers, Yvonne
- Haun, Daniel B.M.
- Venue
- Current Biology
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2011-10
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 20
- Pages
- 1756-1758
- ISSN
- 0960-9822 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2037746597
- Cited by
- 123
- References
- 18
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 6 · 2024: 14 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 13 · 2021: 7 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 11.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Licence
- www.elsevier.com/tdm/userlicense/1.0/ (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/legal/tdmrep-license (tdm)
- www.elsevier.com/open-access/userlicense/1.0/ (vor, 655 d)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-017 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-037 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-012 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-029 (stm-asf)
- doi.org/10.15223/policy-004 (stm-asf)
- Locations
- Current Biology (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Child and Animal Learning Development
- Social Sciences › Cultural Studies › Language and cultural evolution
- Keywords
- human-chimpanzee comparison, collaboration, chimpanzees, children, food procurement, social cognition, prosocial behavior
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Behavior, Animal, Psychology, Child, Child, Preschool, Pan troglodytes, Cooperative Behavior, Female, Food, Humans, Male, Motivation, Psychological Tests
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