ArticleBiology letters2022
Chimpanzees consider freedom of choice in their evaluation of social action.
Article in Biology letters, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- No evidence for inequity aversion in non-human animals: a meta-analysis of accept/reject paradigms.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Pooled it
- Freedom of choice supports social complexity in chimpanzees.iScience · 2026Article
- Invited Reply: Modal reasoning in non-human animals: possible ways forward.Biology letters · 2024Article
- Chimpanzees prepare for alternative possible outcomes.Biology letters · 2023Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Judgements of wrongdoing in humans often hinge upon an assessment of whether a perpetrator acted out of free choice: whether they had more than one option. The classic inhibitors of free choice are constraint (e.g. having your hands tied together) and ignorance (e.g. being unaware that an alternative exists). Here, across two studies, we investigate whether chimpanzees consider these factors in their evaluation of social action. Chimpanzees interacted with a human experimenter who handed them a non-preferred item of food, either because they were physically constrained from accessing the preferred item (Experiment 1) or because they were ignorant of the availability of the preferred item (Experiment 2). We found that chimpanzees were more likely to accept the non-preferred food and showed fewer negative emotional responses when the experimenter was physically constrained compared with when they had free choice. We did not, however, find an effect of ignorance on chimpanzee's evaluation. Freedom of choice factors into chimpanzees' evaluation of how they are treated, but it is unclear whether mental state reasoning is involved in this assessment.
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