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Author Topic:   The opposite of altruism is human?
macaroniandcheese 
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Message 1 of 2 (410865)
07-17-2007 3:06 PM


Whoops! Page Not Found | Discovery
July 16, 2007 ” A new study on our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, found the animals might enact revenge under certain circumstances, but never with spite.
The finding, published in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, suggests homo sapiens are the only known species that sometimes feel a need to see others suffer.
For chimps, on the other hand, the message is, "Don't mess with my lunch, or else."
Researchers Keith Jensen, Josep Call and Michael Tomasello of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany devised experiments where 13 chimps could pull a string attached to a table, causing the table to collapse and fall to the ground. The primates had no trouble doing this, and quickly learned not to pull the string when they were eating food that was resting on the table.
A few study phases tested the general frustration of chimps, since the scientists would allow one chimp to dine in front of another. The onlooker could not reach the food, yet could pull the string. In another version of this test, a person would grab food from one eating, potentially string-pulling chimp and then give the food to another in full view.
The only situation that repeatedly caused the chimps to collapse the table was when a chimpanzee would blatantly steal food from the other. The victim would then pull the string, but without pleasure.
"The chimpanzees who collapsed the table were often angry and would continue to threaten the thief," lead author Jensen told Discovery News. "If they had the chance, and they were dominant, they would likely have beaten up the other chimpanzee."
The chimps did not seem to hold a lasting grudge, however.
Jensen said "when the test was done and the subjects were allowed to be with the rest of the group, there appeared to be no consequences for either individual."
The researchers believe punishment ” in this case disrupting lunch ” can benefit social groups in the long run, since it may discourage selfish behavior and help prevent "the degrading influence of free-riders."
Spite, on the other hand, is not always a means to an end, but rather is an end in itself.
A sneaky human, for example, might hide and pull on the string just to enjoy seeing the table collapse underneath someone else whose lunch was on the table.
Jensen said such spitefulness "is the evil twin of altruism." Just as an empathetic person may help someone even when the only reward is feeling good about the charitable act, a spiteful individual could hurt another even when the only reward is enjoying, or gaining satisfaction from, the other's suffering.
Jensen therefore thinks spitefulness "may form the basis of altruistic punishment, which is a key component for the maintenance of cooperation in groups."
Although the jury is still out on whether non-human primates exhibit altruism, Danielle Stith, primate keeper at the Oakland Zoo in California, has observed that for chimps, "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" is literally true.
"I've seen chimps whimper for food that another chimp is eating," Stith told Discovery News. "After a period of this, the eating chimp will often share, probably because it knows that somewhere down the line, such as during mutual grooming sessions, it may need this other individual's help."
Lower primates, like baboons and monkeys, are not nearly as cooperative. She said dominant male and female baboons may just "push others away," while monkeys might think nothing of taking a bite out of someone else's food.
While differences clearly exist between higher and lower primates, some discrepancies in social behavior between humans and chimpanzees are less clear.
Jensen and his team are now studying whether or not chimps can recognize "nice" and "nasty" human experimenters, based on how the humans treat the animals. They are also investigating how chimps may punish thieves, even when the potential punishers did not directly suffer the losses.
previously somewhere on the board, there was a discussion of the humanity of altruism and then an article was posted which demonstrated that even rats are inherently altruistic. now this suggests that humans developed something after they separated from chimpanzees which allows them to be downright nasty.
this is particularly interesting to me as i study one rather poignant example of human nastiness, genocide. so let's find some other articles and discuss what is it that makes humans want to hurt each other.
human origins i think.
Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.

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Message 2 of 2 (410880)
07-17-2007 4:30 PM


Thread copied to the The opposite of altruism is human? thread in the Human Origins and Evolution forum, this copy of the thread has been closed.

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