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

“该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。“几十年的经济学和社会心理学研究表明，与其他人相比，人们对接受更差的结果做出负面反应。这些反应会影响人们日常生活中的许多决定，有时会导致他们做出对自己不利的决定。最近的研究表明，其他物种对不平等也表现出类似的反应，通常拒绝接受比同伴所获得的奖励低的奖励。然而，到目前为止，这种反应的进化机制和功能仍然未知，在反应如何表现中观察到的显著变化的原因也是如此。 拟议的研究检查了非人类灵长类物种对不平等的负面反应的因素，以确定1）导致这种行为反应的机制，2）影响反应的社会和/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，它们的结果相对于其社会伙伴有所不同。还将调查社会因素（如群体成员）和个人因素（如个性）的影响。 这项研究的结果将阐明不平等结果如何影响决策。 作为一个职业项目，这项工作为本科生和研究生提供了多种机会，使他们能够参与跨学科研究，并提供旨在加强本科教育的课程材料的开发，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.