Competition is crucial for social comparison processes in long-tailed macaques

Abstract

Humans modulate their self-evaluations and behaviour as a function of conspecific presence and performance. In this study, we tested for the presence of human-like social comparison effects in long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis). The monkeys' task was to extract food from an apparatus by pulling drawers within reach and we measured latency between drawer pulls. Subjects either worked on the task with a partner who could access the apparatus from an adjacent cage, worked in the absence of a conspecific but with food moving towards the partner's side or worked next to a partner who was denied apparatus access. We further manipulated partner performance and competitiveness of the set-up. We found no indication that long-tailed macaques compare their performance to the performance of conspecifics. They were not affected by the mere presence of the partner but they paid close attention to the partner's actions when they were consequential for food availability. If social comparison processes are present in long-tailed macaques, the present study suggests they may only manifest in situations involving direct competition and would thus be different from social comparisons in humans, which manifest also in the absence of direct competition, for example in evaluative contexts.

Are you better than me? Social comparisons in carrion crows (Corvus corone)

“…Our ndings are in line with the formulation of a 'weak' social comparison hypothesis for non-human animals derived from recent studies on primates (Dumas et al 2017;Keupp et al 2019;Schmitt et al 2016). To our knowledge, this is the rst study indicative of a comparison process in birds.…”

“…Hence, unlike the macaques, our crows seemed to pay attention to the relevant cues in the current set-up. Note that in the most recent study on macaques, Keupp et al (2019) avoided the auditory modality, and subjects were always able to see their partners' reward; still, this had hardly any effect on their social comparison process, as long as there was no direct, or anticipated, competition for the reward. Unexpectedly, category membership of their co-actors had no signi cant effect on the birds' performance.…”

Choose your partner: Social evaluation of skilfulness at cooperative co-action tasks in Tonkean macaques (Macaca tonkeana)

“…In addition, our subjects were attentive to the partners' actions less than 50 % of the time. This lack of interest in partner performance is in accordance with previous findings showing that long-tailed macaques only paid close attention to partner performance if it had directly relevant consequences for themselves [62,63]. Indeed, in our study, the partners' performance during the demonstration phase did not affect the subjects' food intake, which might have led to a lack of sufficient interest in our subjects.…”

A cognitive–ecological approach to temporal self-appraisals.

“…Broadly speaking, people compare information to an available standard whenever it is perceived, processed, or evaluated (Kahneman & Miller, 1986). And although other mammals engage in comparative thinking and exhibit rudimentary displays of social comparison (Dumas et al, 2017; Keupp et al, 2019; Schmitt et al, 2016; J. Suls et al, 2019), humans are probably exceptional in their ability to compare themselves across time (Suddendorf & Busby, 2003).…”