Multiple assessments of personality and problem-solving performance in captive Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) and African savanna elephants (Loxodonta africana).
Open accessAbstract
Animal personality has been shown to predict many behavioral responses across taxa, but the relationship between personality and performance on cognitive tasks remains unclear. To address this gap, we investigated whether personality predicted problem-solving performance and learning in captive Asian and African savanna elephants. We leveraged 3 novel problem-solving tasks to assess success rate, latency to touch the apparatus, exploratory diversity (the number of different behaviors exhibited toward the task), work time (the proportion of time working on the tasks), and latency to solve. To measure multiple different personality traits, such as boldness, activity, aggressiveness, curiosity, and sociability, across contexts, we carried out novel object presentations, behavioral coding through observations, and trait rating through surveys with zookeepers. We found evidence of personality through behavioral observations and surveys, but not through novel object testing. Aggressiveness and activity were important predictors of problem solving, but this was task-dependent, and the traits we measured did not significantly predict learning. Elephants solved 2 out of 3 tasks faster over time, but they did not vary their latency to touch, exploratory diversity, or work time. We discuss our results in terms of task difficulty and previous work on personality in elephants. Results from this study lay the foundation for future work connecting individual variation in personality to cognitive performance in elephants. In addition, for zoo-housed animals, individual differences research could inform enrichment and welfare decisions as well as conservation strategies. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Plotnik, J. M., & Jacobson, S. L. (2022) · Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2022.101148 · Cited by 34 · see citing works
Jacobson, S. L., Puitiza, A., Snyder, R. J., Sheppard, A., & Plotnik, J. M. (2022) · Animal Cognition · doi:10.1007/s10071-021-01576-3 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
“Barrett and Benson-Amram (2021) assessed a number of personality traits potentially related to successful problem solving in both Asian and African elephants and found that aggressiveness and activity (locomotion and exploration behaviors) were important predictors for solving some tasks.”
BackgroundInnovating to solve a novel puzzle: wild Asian elephants vary in their ability to problem solve
Jacobson, S. L., Dechanupong, J., Horpiencharoen, W., Yindee, M., & Plotnik, J. M. (2023) · Animal Behaviour · doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2023.08.019 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
Cognition of the manatee: past research and future developments
Hénaut, Y., Charles, A., & Delfour, F. (2022) · Animal Cognition · doi:10.1007/s10071-022-01676-8 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
“aggressiveness and activity) were good predictors to problem-solving strategies, with individuals showing these behavioral traits being more efficient in the cognitive task (Barrett and Benson-Amram 2021).”
BackgroundHope, S. F., Willgohs, K. R., Dittakul, S., & Plotnik, J. M. (2025) · Learning & Behavior · doi:10.3758/s13420-024-00655-y · Cited by 8 · see citing works
“Both captive Asian and African savanna (Barrett & Benson-Amram, 2021; Greco et al., 2013; Jacobson et al., 2022) and wild Asian (Jacobson et al., 2023) elephants are able to inno-vate to solve novel foraging problems.”
O'Connell‐Rodwell, C. E., Berezin, J. L., Kinzley, C., Freeman, P. T., Sandri, M. N., Kieschnick, D. W., Rodwell, T. C., Abarca, M., & Hayssen, V. (2024) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0311780 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Wild elephants vary in their attraction to novelty across an anthropogenic landscape gradient
Jacobson, S. L., Dittakul, S., PLA-ARD, M., Sittichok, S., Yindee, M., & Plotnik, J. M. (2025) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.250896 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
“Barrett & Benson-Amram [38] tested Asian and African savannah elephants’ reactions to novelty but did not find that individuals behaved consistently across objects.”
InfluentialMazza, V., Schianini, V., Canestrelli, D., & Carere, C. (2025) · Animal Cognition · doi:10.1007/s10071-025-02013-5 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“Additionally, solving latency decreased with successive testing rounds, indicating an overall improvement of solving efficiency and learning (e.g. Barrett and Benson-Amram 2021 ; Müller and Pillay 2023; Lazure and Weladji 2024b ).”
ManyZoos: A New Collaborative Approach to Multi‐Institution Research in Zoos
Barrett, L. P., Clark, F. E., Freeman, M. S., Williams, E., & O’Connor, V. L. (2025) · Zoo Biology · doi:10.1002/zoo.70017 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Self-citationDo Asian elephants plan for mutually-exclusive outcomes?
Hope, S. F., Dittakul, S., Yindee, M., Angkawanish, T., & Plotnik, J. M. (2025) · Animal Cognition · doi:10.1007/s10071-025-02009-1 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
“Previous studies have shown that Asian elephants can solve novel problems through trial-and-error learning or innovation (Barrett and Benson-Amram 2021; Jacobson et al. 2022, 2023), and the current study supports elephants’ capacity for learning when presented with unique foraging tasks.”
چاجی, ش., Ebrahimpour, M., Pakdaman, M., & Taheri, H. (2022) · The Journal Of Psychological Science · doi:10.52547/jps.21.117.1851 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Flanagan, A. M., Petelle, M. B., Greggor, A. L., et al. (2024) · Animal Conservation · doi:10.1111/acv.12931 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Personality in Asian elephants (Elephas maximus): Temporal stability and methods of assessment
Rutherford, L., Murray, L., Holmes, L., & Williams, E. (2024) · Personality and Individual Differences · doi:10.1016/j.paid.2024.112851 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Innovation, Inhibition and Flexibility in Rhesus Macaques (Macaca mulatta)
Hubbard, J. A., & McCowan, B. (2025) · American Journal of Primatology · doi:10.1002/ajp.70027 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
“Another study assessing different methodologies for measuring personality found that behavioral observations and experimenter ratings of Asian ele-phants were more reflective of problem ‐ solving performance than novel object testing (Barrett and Benson ‐ Amram 2021).”
Dynamics of male African elephant character durability across time and social contextsPreprint
O'Connell‐Rodwell, C. E., Berezin, J. L., Kinzley, C., Freeman, P. T., Sandri, M. N., Kieschnick, D. W., Rodwell, T. C., Abarca, M., & Hayssen, V. (2024) · bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · doi:10.1101/2024.05.24.595367 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Bowers, M. J., Corde, S. C., Hagen, L. V., et al. (2025) · African Journal of Ecology · doi:10.1111/aje.70051 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
Review of depressive-like behaviours in some group-living mammals
Ilmer, I., & Smoleń, T. (2025) · Applied Animal Behaviour Science · doi:10.1016/j.applanim.2025.106753 · Cited by 2 · see citing works
Jacobson, S. L., Puitiza, A., Snyder, R. J., et al. (2021) · doi:10.31234/osf.io/zf2yv
Measuring Zoo Rhino Personality: Investigating Methods of Assessment and Relationships to BehaviourPreprint
Watts, S. L., Martin, J. H., & Williams, E. (2024) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.4782969
Rößler, T., O’Hara, M., Mioduszewska, B., Folkertsma, R., Mundry, R., & Auersperg, A. M. I. (2025) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0335028
Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) demonstrate inhibitory control in a detour task
Hope, S. F., Jacobson, S. L., Dittakul, S., Schmitt, G., PLA-ARD, M., Yindee, M., Angkawanish, T., & Plotnik, J. M. (2026) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0356549
“Asian elephants ( Elephas maximus ) in particular are large-brained mammals living in complex, fission-fusion social groups [28], that make flexible decisions based on changing environmental pressures [29,30], and can solve problems both innovatively [31–33] and cooperatively [34,35].”
- Authors
- Barrett, L. P., & Benson-Amram, S.
- Venue
- Journal of Comparative Psychology
- Published
- 2021-08
- Volume
- 135
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 406-419
- ISSN
- 0093-4127 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-2087
- 0735-7036
- OpenAlex
- W3175480766
- Cited by
- 22
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 2.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Journal of comparative psychology (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (DGE-1747504)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Health Sciences › Veterinary › Small Animals › Animal Behavior and Welfare Studies
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Primate Behavior and Ecology
- Keywords
- animal personality, problem-solving performance, cognitive performance, elephants, Asian elephant, African savanna elephant, boldness, aggression, activity, curiosity, sociability, learning, zoo animals, captive animals, individual differences, enrichment, animal welfare
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Animals, Zoo, Elephants, Personality, Problem Solving, Grassland
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
