Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 29 May 2013 Time: 05:00 PM ET
Chimpanzees and bonobos have temper tantrums when their decisions don't play out as they'd hoped, hinting that humans aren't the only species to let emotions influence their choices.
These non-human apes pout, whimper, scratch themselves and bang on things when a risky choice fails to pay off or when they have to wait for a desired reward, according to new research published Wednesday (May 29) in the journal PLOS ONE.
"Even though animals don't engage in economic behavior like humans with money, the psychological skills that humans bring to the table when making economic decisions seem to be shared with animals," said study leader Alexandra Rosati, a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at Yale University.
Emotional choices
Humans have the power of logic, but that doesn't always mean they use it. Multiple studies of decision-making have found that emotions play a big role in choices, particularly when information is complicated or incomplete. Humans also anticipate their own emotional reactions to various outcomes when making choices, Rosati told LiveScience. For example, people who know they'll feel great
regret if they lose at gambling tend to gamble less than those who don't feel the pain of loss as keenly.
regret if they lose at gambling tend to gamble less than those who don't feel the pain of loss as keenly.
Rosati and her colleagues wanted to know how far back this emotional decision-making evolved. As humans' closest living relatives, chimps (Pan troglodytes) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) were the perfect places to look. Evidence of emotional decisions in these apes would suggest humans share this tendency with other primate relatives. If the apes were unemotional decision-makers, however, it might suggest emotional decision-making evolved later in the human lineage.
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