Give what you get: capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-year-old children pay forward positive and negative outcomes to conspecifics

Kristin L Leimgruber; Adrian F Ward; Jane Widness; Michael I Norton; Kristina R Olson; Kurt Gray; Laurie R Santos

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0087035

Give what you get: capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-year-old children pay forward positive and negative outcomes to conspecifics

PLoS One. 2014 Jan 29;9(1):e87035. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0087035. eCollection 2014.

Authors

Kristin L Leimgruber¹, Adrian F Ward², Jane Widness¹, Michael I Norton³, Kristina R Olson¹, Kurt Gray⁴, Laurie R Santos¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America.
² Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America.
³ Harvard Business School, Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
⁴ Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America.

Abstract

The breadth of human generosity is unparalleled in the natural world, and much research has explored the mechanisms underlying and motivating human prosocial behavior. Recent work has focused on the spread of prosocial behavior within groups through paying-it-forward, a case of human prosociality in which a recipient of generosity pays a good deed forward to a third individual, rather than back to the original source of generosity. While research shows that human adults do indeed pay forward generosity, little is known about the origins of this behavior. Here, we show that both capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) and 4-year-old children pay forward positive and negative outcomes in an identical testing paradigm. These results suggest that a cognitively simple mechanism present early in phylogeny and ontogeny leads to paying forward positive, as well as negative, outcomes.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

Aggression / psychology*
Animals
Behavior, Animal*
Beneficence*
Cebus / psychology*
Child, Preschool
Female
Humans
Male
Motivation
Psychological Tests

Grants and funding

This research was supported in part by funding from The Templeton Positive Neuroscience Award and the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates Program (SMA-1004797). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.