Allan Andrew T L, Bailey Annie L, Hill Russell A
Department of Anthropology, Durham University, Dawson Building, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK.
Primate and Predator Project, Lajuma Research Centre, PO Box 522, Louis Trichardt 0920, South Africa.
Sci Adv. 2020 Jul 8;6(28):eaaz0870. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aaz0870. eCollection 2020 Jul.
In behavioral studies, observer effects can be substantial, even for habituated animals, but few studies account for potential observer-related phenomenon empirically. We used wild, habituated chacma baboons to explore two key assumptions of behavioral ecology (i) that observers become a "neutral" stimulus and (ii) that habituation is "equal" across group members. Using flight initiation distance (FID) methods within a personality paradigm, the behavioral responses of baboons suggested that observers were not perceived as neutral but instead viewed as a high-ranking social threat. Habituation was also not equal across group members, with repeatable individual differences more important than contextual factors (e.g., habitat) in determining the distance at which baboons visually oriented or displaced from observers. A strong correlation between individual visual tolerance and displacement tolerance (i.e., convergent validity) indicated a personality trait. We offer several suggestions for how to account for these factors and minimize potential bias in future studies.
在行为研究中，即使对于习惯化的动物，观察者效应也可能相当显著，但很少有研究从实证角度考虑潜在的与观察者相关的现象。我们利用野生的、习惯化的南非大狒狒来探究行为生态学的两个关键假设：（i）观察者会成为一种“中性”刺激，以及（ii）习惯化在群体成员中是“等同的”。在个性范式中使用飞行起始距离（FID）方法，狒狒的行为反应表明，观察者并未被视为中性，而是被视为一种高等级的社会威胁。习惯化在群体成员中也不相同，在决定狒狒从观察者处视觉定向或离开的距离时，可重复的个体差异比情境因素（如栖息地）更为重要。个体视觉耐受性与离开耐受性之间的强相关性（即聚合效度）表明这是一种个性特征。我们针对如何考虑这些因素以及在未来研究中尽量减少潜在偏差提供了几条建议。
