CAREER: Understanding Responses to Inequitable Outcomes in Non-Human Primates

“这个奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案(公法111-5)资助的。”数十年的经济学和社会心理学研究表明，与其他人相比，人们对收到更糟糕的结果会做出负面反应。这些反应影响了人们日常生活中的许多决定，有时还会导致他们做出对自己不利的决定。最近的研究表明，其他物种对不平等表现出类似的反应，经常拒绝比同龄人获得的奖励更低的奖励。然而，到目前为止，这种反应的进化机制(S)和功能(S)仍然不清楚，反应如何表现出显著差异的原因也是未知的。这项拟议的研究考察了非人类灵长类物种对不平等的负面反应周围的因素，以确定1)导致这种行为反应的机制(S)，2)影响这种反应的社会和/或环境因素，以及3)这种反应的进化历史。七种灵长类动物将被要求在一系列研究中决定是否接受奖励，在这些研究中，它们的结果与他们的社会伴侣不同。团体成员等社会因素和个性等个人因素的影响也将得到调查。这项研究的结果将阐明不平等结果是如何影响决策的。作为一个职业项目，这项工作为本科生和研究生提供了参与跨学科研究的多种机会，并为开发旨在加强本科教育的课程材料提供了准备，这些材料将免费分发给社区。

"This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5)."Decades of research in economics and social psychology shows that people respond negatively to receiving worse outcomes as compared to other individuals. These reactions impact many decisions in people's daily lives and sometimes lead them to make decisions to their detriment. More recent research indicates that other species exhibit a similar reaction to inequality, often refusing rewards that are inferior to those received by their peers. However, thus far the evolutionary mechanism(s) for and function(s) of this response remain unknown, as does the reason for the significant variation seen in how the response manifests. The proposed research examines the factors surrounding negative reactions to inequity across non-human primate species to determine 1) the mechanism(s) causing this behavioral reaction, 2) the social and/or environmental factors affecting the reaction and 3) the evolutionary history of this reaction. Seven species of primates will be asked to make decisions about whether or not to accept rewards in a series of studies in which their outcomes vary relative to their social partners. The influence of social factors like group membership and individual factors like personality will also be investigated. The results of this research will clarify how decision-making is affected by unequal outcomes. As a CAREER project, this work offers undergraduate and graduate students multiple opportunities to become involved with interdisciplinary research, as well as providing for the development of course materials designed to enhance undergraduate education, which will be freely distributed to the community.