Animal Behaviour and Cognition (formerly Animal Ecology), Department Biology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Ethology Research, Animal Science Department, Biomedical Primate Research Centre, Rijswijk, The Netherlands.
PLoS One. 2021 Apr 2;16(4):e0249519. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249519. eCollection 2021.
Emotional bookkeeping is the process by which primates integrate the emotional effects of social interactions to form internal representations of their affiliative relationships. The dynamics and speed of this process, which comprises the formation, maintenance and fading out of affiliative relationships, are not clear. Empirical data suggest that affiliative relationships are slowly formed and do not easily fade out. The EMO-model, an agent-based model designed to simulate the social life of primates capable of emotional bookkeeping, was used to explore the effects of different types of internal relationship dynamics and speeds of increase and decrease of relationship strength. In the original EMO-model the internal dynamics involves a fast built-up of a relationship independent of its current quality, alongside a relatively fast fading out of relationship quality. Here we explore the effect of this original dynamics and an alternative dynamics more in line with empirical data, in combination with different speeds of internal relationship quality increase and decrease, on the differentiation and stability of affiliative relationships. The alternative dynamics leads to more differentiated and stable affiliative relationships than the original dynamics, especially when the speed with which internal relationship quality increases is low and the speed with which it decreases is intermediate. Consequently, individuals can groom different group members with varying frequency and support a rich social life with stable preferred partners and attention to several others. In conclusion, differentiated and stable affiliative relationships are especially formed when friends are not made too quickly and not forgotten too easily.
情绪簿记是灵长类动物将社交互动的情绪影响整合起来，形成其亲和关系内部表征的过程。这个过程的动态和速度，包括亲和关系的形成、维持和消退，并不清楚。实证数据表明，亲和关系是缓慢形成的，不容易消退。EMO 模型是一种基于代理的模型，旨在模拟能够进行情绪簿记的灵长类动物的社交生活，用于探索不同类型的内部关系动态和关系强度增加和减少的速度对亲和关系的影响。在原始的 EMO 模型中，内部动态涉及到一种快速建立关系的机制，而不考虑其当前质量，同时关系质量也相对较快地消退。在这里，我们探讨了这种原始动态以及更符合实证数据的替代动态的影响，以及不同的内部关系质量增加和减少的速度对亲和关系的分化和稳定性的影响。替代动态比原始动态导致更分化和稳定的亲和关系，尤其是当内部关系质量增加的速度较低，而减少的速度中等时。因此，个体可以根据不同的频率与不同的群体成员梳理毛发，并支持丰富的社交生活，与稳定的首选伙伴保持关注，同时也关注其他几个伙伴。总之，当朋友不是建立得太快，也不容易忘记时，就会形成分化和稳定的亲和关系。
