Abstract
Researchers increasingly view animal personality traits as products of natural selection. We present data that describe the personalities of 128 eastern chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii) currently living in or who lived their lives in the Kasekela and Mitumba communities of Gombe National Park, Tanzania. We obtained ratings on 24 items from an established, reliable, well-validated questionnaire used to study personality in captive chimpanzee populations. Ratings were made by former and present Tanzanian field assistants who followed individual chimpanzees for years and collected detailed behavioral observations. Interrater reliabilities across items ranged from acceptable to good, but the personality dimensions they formed were not as interpretable as those from captive samples. However, the personality dimensions corresponded to ratings of 24 Kasekela chimpanzees on a different questionnaire in 1973 that assessed some similar traits. These correlations established the repeatability and construct validity of the present ratings, indicating that the present data can facilitate historical and prospective studies that will lead to better understanding of the evolution of personality in chimpanzees and other primates.
Highlights
Background & SummaryPersonality variation exists in diverse taxa, including insects, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals[1]
The dimensions described in our data reduction analyses differed depending on the approach used for data reduction and factor rotation, and one solution, the promax rotation of four factors, yielded a Heywood case
Studies of chimpanzees[41,44,47] and other nonhuman primates[10,48,69] found that the choice of method for data reduction and the decision of whether to allow dimensions to correlate, has little to no effect on what items make up the dimensions
Summary
Background & SummaryPersonality variation exists in diverse taxa, including insects, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals[1]. This study involved ratings of 24 chimpanzees from the Kasekela community on a personality questionnaire, the Emotions Profile Index (EPI), made in 1973 by researchers (students and post-docs) who had been studying these chimpanzees and who had known them for several months to several years[7]. The EPI ratings were consistent across raters They indicated that females were more Trustful, Timid, and Depressed, but less Distrustful and Gregarious than males, and that higher ranking males were more Aggressive and less Timid while lower ranking males were more Dyscontrolled and more Timid[7]. The personality profile of one female (Passion) differed markedly from other females: she was more Aggressive, Depressed, and Distrustful, and less Trustful, Timid, Controlled, and Gregarious. Starting in 1975, Passion and her daughter Pom killed and ate at least four infants of other females in the community[8]
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