Abstract
Prosocial behaviours such as helping, comforting, or sharing are central to human social life. Because they emerge early in ontogeny, it has been proposed that humans are prosocial by nature and that from early on empathy and sympathy motivate such behaviours. The emerging question is whether humans share these abilities to feel with and for someone with our closest relatives, the great apes. Although several studies demonstrated that great apes help others, little is known about their underlying motivations. This study addresses this issue and investigates whether four species of great apes (Pongo pygmaeus, Gorilla gorilla, Pan troglodytes, Pan paniscus) help a conspecific more after observing the conspecific being harmed (a human experimenter steals the conspecific’s food) compared to a condition where no harming occurred. Results showed that in regard to the occurrence of prosocial behaviours, only orangutans, but not the African great apes, help others when help is needed, contrasting prior findings on chimpanzees. However, with the exception of one population of orangutans that helped significantly more after a conspecific was harmed than when no harm occurred, prosocial behaviour in great apes was not motivated by concern for others.
Highlights
Prosocial behaviours such as helping, comforting, or the sharing of resources or information are central to human social life [1,2] and emerge early in ontogeny [3]
Following the procedure of Vaish et al [20], we investigated whether great apes show greater prosocial behaviour towards a conspecific who has been harmed than towards a conspecific who has not been harmed, under the assumption that greater prosocial behaviour towards a conspecific who has been harmed would suggest that sympathy drives prosocial behaviour in apes as it does in humans
We aimed to investigate the motivation underlying prosocial behaviour in great apes
Summary
Prosocial behaviours such as helping, comforting, or the sharing of resources or information are central to human social life [1,2] and emerge early in ontogeny [3]. While empathy represents the ability to feel with someone, sympathy refers to the ability to feel for someone and to experience concern for others, often leading to prosocial behaviours to ease the other’s distress [14]. Both empathy and sympathy are considered essential skills to maintain and regulate the complex social life of humans. Individuals who are empathic or sympathetic are more likely to act in prosocial ways and less likely to show antisocial behaviours such as aggression [15,16]
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