Heesen Raphaela, Bangerter Adrian, Zuberbühler Klaus, Iglesias Katia, Rossano Federico, Guéry Jean-Pascal, Genty Emilie
Department of Psychology, University of Durham, Durham, United Kingdom.
Institute of Work and Organizational Psychology, University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland.
PLoS One. 2025 Mar 26;20(3):e0292984. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0292984. eCollection 2025.
When humans engage in joint action, they seem to so with an underlying sense of joint commitment, a feeling of mutual obligation towards their partner and a shared goal. Whether our closest living relatives, bonobos and chimpanzees, experience and understand joint commitment in the same way is subject to debate. Crucial evidence concerns how participants respond to interruptions of joint actions, particularly if they protest or attempt to reengage their reluctant or distracted partners. During dyadic interactions, bonobos and chimpanzees exhibit evidence of reengagement following interruptions of naturalistic joint activities with conspecifics, according to recent studies. Yet, data are still inconsistent for triadic games, where two social partners engage with each other socially by focusing on a common object. We addressed this issue by engaging N = 23 apes (5 adult chimpanzees, 5 infant bonobos, 13 adult bonobos) in a "tug-of-war" game with a human experimenter who abruptly stopped playing. Following interruptions, adult apes readily produced communicative signals towards the experimenter (>60% of subjects on first trial), which we interpreted as reengagement attempts of their passive social partner, with no group differences in this respect. Infant bonobos, by contrast, communicated rarely with the experimenters compared to adult bonobos, and never during their first trial. Crucially, when infant bonobos signaled to passive partners, they predominantly used tactile signals, but rarely exhibited behaviors related to the game, which were instead commonly seen in adults. It is thus possible that bonobos and chimpanzees share some of the basic motivational foundations for joint commitment, yet that this capacity is subject to developmental effects.
当人类进行联合行动时，他们似乎带着一种潜在的联合承诺感，一种对伙伴的相互义务感以及一个共同目标。我们现存的近亲倭黑猩猩和黑猩猩是否以同样的方式体验和理解联合承诺仍存在争议。关键证据在于参与者如何应对联合行动的中断，特别是他们是否抗议或试图重新让不情愿或分心的伙伴参与进来。根据最近的研究，在二元互动中，倭黑猩猩和黑猩猩在与同种个体的自然主义联合活动中断后表现出重新参与的迹象。然而，对于三元游戏的数据仍然不一致，在三元游戏中，两个社会伙伴通过专注于一个共同对象进行社交互动。我们通过让N = 23只猿类（5只成年黑猩猩、5只幼年倭黑猩猩、13只成年倭黑猩猩）与一名人类实验者进行“拔河”游戏来解决这个问题，该实验者会突然停止游戏。在中断之后，成年猿类会迅速向实验者发出交流信号（首次试验中超过60%的受试者），我们将其解释为它们对被动社会伙伴的重新参与尝试，在这方面没有群体差异。相比之下，幼年倭黑猩猩与实验者的交流很少，在首次试验中从未交流过。至关重要的是，当幼年倭黑猩猩向被动伙伴发出信号时，它们主要使用触觉信号，但很少表现出与游戏相关的行为，而这些行为在成年个体中很常见。因此，倭黑猩猩和黑猩猩可能共享一些联合承诺的基本动机基础，但这种能力可能受到发育影响。
