No third-party punishment in chimpanzees

Punishment can help maintain cooperation by deterring free-riding and cheating. Of particular importance in large-scale human societies is third-party punishment in which individuals punish a transgressor or norm violator even when they themselves are not affected. Nonhuman primates and other animal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences - PNAS 2012-09, Vol.109 (37), p.14824-14829
Main Authors: Riedl, Katrin, Jensen, Keith, Call, Josep, Tomasello, Michael
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal behavior
Animals
Animals, Zoo
Behavior, Animal - physiology
Biological Evolution
Biological Sciences
Chimpanzees
Control variables
Evolution
Food
Food access
Humans
Kinship
Larceny
Linear Models
Monkeys & apes
Pan troglodytes
Pan troglodytes - physiology
Primates
Punishment - psychology
Social Behavior
Social evolution
Social Sciences
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Summary:Punishment can help maintain cooperation by deterring free-riding and cheating. Of particular importance in large-scale human societies is third-party punishment in which individuals punish a transgressor or norm violator even when they themselves are not affected. Nonhuman primates and other animals aggress against conspecifics with some regularity, but it is unclear whether this is ever aimed at punishing others for noncooperation, and whether third-party punishment occurs at all. Here we report an experimental study in which one of humans' closest living relatives, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), could punish an individual who stole food. Dominants retaliated when their own food was stolen, but they did not punish when the food of third-parties was stolen, even when the victim was related to them. Third-party punishment as a means of enforcing cooperation, as humans do, might therefore be a derived trait in the human lineage.
ISSN:0027-8424
1091-6490
DOI:10.1073/pnas.1203179109