Psychology
Friends point you in right direction
Wed, 11 Jan 2012 13:38:00 GMT
Friendship, more than family ties, has a vital role to play in helping monkeys cope better with whatever life throws at them, according to a new study.
Scientists at the University of Portsmouth studied gaze following – looking where a companion is looking – and their results are the first to prove friendship has such a pivotal role in the social behaviour of primates.
Gaze following is seen as a key marker of social development because following the gaze of another is a way to obtain important information about the environment and is closely linked to the ability to understand what others are thinking.
Scientists studied crested macaques and found they followed the gaze of another regardless of the other’s status as a friend, family member or dominant member of the group, but when it came to friends, the speed with which a macaque looked in the same direction was much faster.
Authors PhD student Jerome Micheletta and Dr Bridget Waller, both of the university’s Department of Psychology, said the findings point to friendship being an important influence in shaping the way the primates see the world and cope with its challenges.
Mr Micheletta said: “Our findings reveal something about the evolution of friendship and its links with cognition and communication, which have not been studied before.
“Our study shows that friendship, more than family ties or the status of another, improves the gaze-following ability of this particular macaque species. It is likely the same applies to other primates, including humans.”
Gaze following is not an automatic response but is flexible and depends on the situation and relationship between animals. It is known to take place in a wide range of animals including humans, chimpanzees, goats, dolphins, jackdaws and tortoises, but how specific social dynamics affect individual gaze following has been until now poorly understood.
The research proves there is nothing random about who follows whose gaze, or how speedily they pick up the sometimes very subtle changes to another’s eye movements.
Mr Micheletta said: “Macaques follow the gaze of others in order to cope with a complex and challenging social life.
“It is thought gaze following – which occurs even when the ‘gaze’ is an almost imperceptible eye movement – helps individuals learn valuable things about their social and physical environment by providing clues about the location of something interesting, whether that be food, a threat or something else.
“Our main finding is that gaze following is strongly influenced by the degree of friendship between the macaques. Friends did not react more often to the gaze of those who weren’t friends, but reacted much faster to friends’ gazes regardless of the subtlety or lack of it in the informants’ movements. Our results suggest that this effect of friendship seems independent of social status and family relationships.”
Scientists do not yet know why macaques follow the gaze of a friend more swiftly than that of a family member or dominant member of the group, but Mr Micheletta said there were various theories: “One possible reason for this could be that information gained from a friend is likely to be more relevant and useful to the gaze follower. Rapidly following the gaze of another might be advantageous in many ways – finding a resource such as food is more likely if competition between friends is reduced, and an individual is more likely to be more concerned about any social event involving a friend. This is partly so they can help support each other during conflict which helps build social cohesion and stability.”
The scientists studied crested macaques, known to be one of the most tolerant macaque species who resolve conflicts rapidly and who aren’t strongly constrained by dominance or kinship. Their study is published in the journal Animal Behaviour. Collaborators in this study included Marwell Wildlife and the Macaca Nigra Project.