Chimpanzees’ task performance improves with a human audience, research shows

Chimpanzees have shown better performance on challenging computer tasks when observed by humans, according to a study published Nov. 8 in iScience. The study, conducted at Kyoto University, observed chimpanzees performing number-based tasks on touchscreens, monitored under different audience conditions. It was found that their performance increased as the difficulty of the task increased as the number of human observers also increased. However, for simpler tasks, chimpanzees performed worse in the presence of larger audiences, indicating a nuanced relationship between observation and performance.

A unique setting for interaction between chimpanzee and human

Researchers, including Christen Lin of Kyoto University, investigated whether chimpanzees experience an ‘audience effect’, which is usually attributed to reputation management in humans. The studyled by Shinya Yamamoto and Akiho Muramatsu, focused on chimpanzees accustomed to daily interactions with humans and familiar with touchscreen tasks for food rewards. Given the animals’ comfortable coexistence with humans, the researchers saw an opportunity to explore whether crowd dynamics could influence their task performance, as they do in humans.

Complex effects of human observation

During thousands of sessions spanning six years, chimpanzees’ task performance was measured at various task difficulties. The study revealed a marked improvement on complex tasks when observed by a larger human audience, while on simpler tasks under similar conditions, accuracy decreased. The researchers found this surprising, as it indicated a level of social awareness previously thought to be exclusive to humans.

Implications for understanding social dynamics in primates

The findings suggest that the impact of being watched, even by a different species, may not be unique to humans. As Yamamoto noted, the influence of an audience on the performance of nonhuman primates provides valuable insights into the social behavior that may have shaped early primate societies long before human reputation-based systems emerged. Further research could help understand the evolutionary basis of this social trait in great apes.