Warwick Business School (Behavioural Science), The University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7 AL, UK.
Curr Opin Psychol. 2018 Apr;20:82-86. doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.08.019. Epub 2017 Aug 12.
Comparative studies with closely related primate species are crucial to understand the origins of human prosociality. One type of prosocial behaviour that probably relies on evolutionary ancient skills and motivations is instrumental helping. Recent experimental studies have shown that bonobos and chimpanzees will help others achieve their action goals. Chimpanzees have shown to help others picking up and giving objects to a recipient, opening locked doors for conspecifics struggling to open them, and releasing stuck rewards that recipients were trying to reach. Recent studies have now replicated some of these results with bonobos. However, whereas chimpanzee's helping emerges mainly in response to recipients' signals of need, bonobos also help proactively. This difference could rely on bonobos' enhanced socio-cognitive skills.
与亲缘关系密切的灵长类动物进行比较研究对于理解人类亲社会行为的起源至关重要。一种可能依赖于进化古老技能和动机的亲社会行为是工具性帮助。最近的实验研究表明，倭黑猩猩和黑猩猩会帮助他人实现其行动目标。黑猩猩已经表现出帮助他人捡起并将物体递给接收者，为同类打开难以打开的锁门，并释放卡住的奖励，这些奖励是接收者试图获得的。最近的研究现在已经在倭黑猩猩身上复制了其中的一些结果。然而，尽管黑猩猩的帮助主要是在接收者发出需要的信号后才出现，但倭黑猩猩也会主动提供帮助。这种差异可能依赖于倭黑猩猩增强的社会认知技能。
