EVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE ON EMPATHY

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This subproject is one of many research subprojects utilizing the resources provided by a Center grant funded by NIH/NCRR. Primary support for the subproject and the subproject's principal investigator may have been provided by other sources, including other NIH sources. The Total Cost listed for the subproject likely represents the estimated amount of Center infrastructure utilized by the subproject, not direct funding provided by the NCRR grant to the subproject or subproject staff. If another chimpanzee has been hurt in a fight, chimpanzees tend to approach them, and put an arm around them. This is known as consolation behavior. They also show targeted helping in which they provide others with assistance they need, such as supporting an injured companion. We have set up a research program to study expressions of empathy on two levels: a) spontaneous expressions that we can observe in the chimpanzee's group life, and b) experimental situations in which we use contagious behavior as a proxy of empathy (because in humans such behaviors correlate with empathy, and are for example largely absent in autistic children). Over the last year, these two projects have resulted in five publications. The yawn contagion study has provided evidence that contagion is stronger with videos of in-group than the out-group, which is consistent with the empathy hypothesis (as empathy in both humans and other animals tends to be in-group biased). The studies of post-conflict behavior also support the empathy hypothesis, especially a paper just published in PNAS (first author: Romero), which shows a sex bias similar to that in humans (i.e. females shoring more empathy than males). We are further adding observations of bonobo behavior at a Kinshasa sanctuary on consolation behavior, a project led by Dr. Zanna Clay.