Article published in:
Social Animal CognitionEdited by Tetsuro Matsuzawa
[Interaction Studies 10:2] 2009
► pp. 150–182
How did altruism and reciprocity evolve in humans?
Perspectives from experiments on chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes)
Shinya Yamamoto | Primate Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan
Masayuki Tanaka | Wildlife Research Center, Kyoto University, Japan
The evolution of altruism and reciprocity has been explained mainly from ultimate perspectives. However, in order to understand from a proximate perspective how humans evolved to be such cooperative animals, comparative studies with our evolutionary relatives are essential. Here we review several recent experimental studies on chimpanzees’ altruism and reciprocity. These studies have generated some conflicting results. By examining the differences in the results and experimental paradigms, two characteristics of prosociality in chimpanzees emerged: (1) chimpanzees are more likely to behave altruistically and/or reciprocally upon a recipient’s request, than without request, and (2) chimpanzees also show a tendency to regard others and help in contexts not involving food. Supposing that these two characteristics of altruism, recipient-initiated altruism and non-food altruism, were present in the common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans, it is possible that increased social cognitive abilities, capacity for language, necessity for food sharing, and enriched material culture favored in humans the unique evolution of cooperation, characterized by voluntary altruism and frequent food donation.
Keywords: prosocial behavior, chimpanzees, non-food altruism, reciprocity, recipient-initiated altruism, human evolution
Published online: 23 July 2009
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.10.2.04yam
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.10.2.04yam
Cited by
Cited by 28 other publications
Brosnan, Sarah F.
2011. An evolutionary perspective on morality.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 77:1 ► pp. 23 ff. 
Brosnan, Sarah F.
2014.
In Empirically Informed Ethics: Morality between Facts and Norms [Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, 32],
► pp. 85 ff.
Brosnan, Sarah F., Catherine Talbot, Megan Ahlgren, Susan P. Lambeth & Steven J. Schapiro
2010. Mechanisms underlying responses to inequitable outcomes in chimpanzees, Pan troglodytes.
Animal Behaviour 79:6 ► pp. 1229 ff.
Bräuer, Juliane
2015. I do not understand but I care.
Interaction Studies. Social Behaviour and Communication in Biological and Artificial Systems 16:3 ► pp. 341 ff.
Bucher, Benoit, Hika Kuroshima, James R. Anderson & Kazuo Fujita
2021. On experimental tests for studying altruism in capuchin monkeys.
Behavioural Processes 189 ► pp. 104424 ff.
Chen, Jingnan & Daniel Houser
2012. Non-human Primate Studies Inform the Foundations of Fair and Just Human Institutions.
Social Justice Research 25:3 ► pp. 277 ff.
Cieri, Robert L., Steven E. Churchill, Robert G. Franciscus, Jingzhi Tan & Brian Hare
2014. Craniofacial Feminization, Social Tolerance, and the Origins of Behavioral Modernity.
Current Anthropology 55:4 ► pp. 419 ff.
Cronin, Katherine A.
2012. Prosocial behaviour in animals: the influence of social relationships, communication and rewards.
Animal Behaviour 84:5 ► pp. 1085 ff.
Haider, Sajid, Carmen De-Pablos-Heredero & Monica De-Pablos-Heredero
2021. The Paradox of Citizenship Cost: Examining a Longitudinal Indirect Effect of Altruistic Citizenship Behavior on Work–Family Conflict Through Coworker Support.
Frontiers in Psychology 12
HIRATA, Satoshi
2009. .
Primate Research 25:2 ► pp. 55 ff.
House, Bailey R., Joan B. Silk, Susan P. Lambeth, Steven J. Schapiro & Cheryl McCormick
2014. Task Design Influences Prosociality in Captive Chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes).
PLoS ONE 9:9 ► pp. e103422 ff.
Jaeggi, Adrian V., Judith M. Burkart & Carel P. Van Schaik
2010. On the psychology of cooperation in humans and other primates: combining the natural history and experimental evidence of prosociality.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 365:1553 ► pp. 2723 ff.
Karaiskaki, Andrea & Xenia Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous
2018.
In Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science,
► pp. 1 ff.
Karaiskaki, Andrea & Xenia Anastassiou-Hadjicharalambous
2021.
In Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science,
► pp. 7764 ff.
MATSUZAWA, TETSURO
2009. Comparative cognitive science: The 30 years of Ai project.
Japanese Journal of Animal Psychology 59:1 ► pp. 135 ff.
Rebato, Esther
2016.
In Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics,
► pp. 1 ff.
Rebato, Esther
2019.
In Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics,
► pp. 970 ff.
Stevens, Jeffrey R.
2010. Donor payoffs and other-regarding preferences in cotton-top tamarins (Saguinus oedipus).
Animal Cognition 13:4 ► pp. 663 ff.
Tennie, Claudio, Keith Jensen & Josep Call
2016. The nature of prosociality in chimpanzees.
Nature Communications 7:1
Urbanik, Paweł
2020. Getting others to share goods in Polish and Norwegian: Material and moral anchors for request conventions
.
Intercultural Pragmatics 17:2 ► pp. 177 ff.
Yamamoto, S., T. Humle & M. Tanaka
2012. Chimpanzees' flexible targeted helping based on an understanding of conspecifics' goals.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109:9 ► pp. 3588 ff.
YAMAMOTO, Shinya
2011. .
Primate Research 27:2 ► pp. 95 ff.
YAMAMOTO, SHINYA
2017. Evolution of food sharing and cooperative societies: comparative cognitive approach with bonobos, chimpanzees, and humans.
Japanese Journal of Animal Psychology 67:2 ► pp. 63 ff.
Yamamoto, Shinya
2017. Primate empathy: three factors and their combinations for empathy‐related phenomena.
WIREs Cognitive Science 8:3
Yamamoto, Shinya, Tatyana Humle, Masayuki Tanaka & Stewart Plaistow
2009. Chimpanzees Help Each Other upon Request.
PLoS ONE 4:10 ► pp. e7416 ff.
Yamamoto, Shinya & Ayaka Takimoto
2012. Empathy and Fairness: Psychological Mechanisms for Eliciting and Maintaining Prosociality and Cooperation in Primates.
Social Justice Research 25:3 ► pp. 233 ff.
Yamamoto, Shinya & Masayuki Tanaka
2009. Selfish strategies develop in social problem situations in chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes) mother–infant pairs.
Animal Cognition 12:S1 ► pp. 27 ff.
Yamamoto, Shinya & Masayuki Tanaka
2010. The influence of kin relationship and reciprocal context on chimpanzees' other-regarding preferences.
Animal Behaviour 79:3 ► pp. 595 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 october 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.