Abstract
Conceptual metaphors are linguistic constructions. Such a metaphor is humans’ mental representation of social rank as a pyramidal-like structure. High-ranked individuals are represented in higher positions than low-ranked individuals. We show that conceptual metaphorical mapping between social rank and the representational domain exists in our closest evolutionary relatives, the chimpanzees. Chimpanzee participants were requested to discriminate face identities in a vertical arrangement. We found a modulation of response latencies by the rank of the presented individual and the position on the display: a high-ranked individual presented in the higher and a low-ranked individual in the lower position led to quicker identity discrimination than a high-ranked individual in the lower and a low-ranked individual in the higher position. Such a spatial representation of dominance hierarchy in chimpanzees suggests that a natural tendency to systematically map an abstract dimension exists in the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.00932.001
Highlights
Humans represent social status in a pyramidal-like structure (Bosserman, 1983): high-ranked individuals are represented in spatially higher positions than low-ranked individuals in diverse contexts, for example, stratification (Saunders, 1989), organizations (Weber, 1991), religion, family, human needs (Maslow, 1943), and others. We examined if such conceptual metaphorical mapping between social dominance and the spatial domain is uniquely human or if it appears in our evolutionary closest relative, the chimpanzees
Note that the participants did not classify the stimuli based on social rank
We found significant deviations from zero for the high position (t(5) = 16.64, m.s.e. = 1.11e+004, p
Summary
“high” vs “low status”, “top of the heap”, “bottom of the barrel”: These or similar expressions are widely observed across cultures and languages (Pinker, 1997). If they do not match, the conflict between the neural representations of social status and physical position slows down the response These findings suggest that conceptual metaphors are not uniquely human and, that they could have emerged before the development of language. Besides these non-verbal cues, we humans developed a conceptual metaphor, which connects social rank to the spatial domain (e.g., “high” vs “low status” [Pinker, 1997]). We examined if such conceptual metaphorical mapping between social dominance and the spatial domain is uniquely human or if it appears in our evolutionary closest relative, the chimpanzees We addressed this question by comparing response latencies on discriminating photographs of familiar chimpanzee faces of high- and low-ranked individuals in a vertically aligned delayed matching-to-sample task. We hypothesize that coherent arrangements, such as a high-ranked individual presented in the higher and a low-ranked individual presented in the lower position, lead to quicker identity discrimination than incoherent arrangements, such as a highranked individual in the lower and a low-ranked individual in the higher position
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