Chimps do better at difficult tasks when they have an audience

The impact of an audience on performance can vary for both humans and chimpanzees, as revealed by a recent study conducted at Kyoto University, Japan.

Christen Lin and his team observed six chimpanzees at the university’s primate research institute as they engaged in numerical tasks of increasing difficulty.

Initially, the chimps were tasked with touching numbers in sequential order to receive a food reward. As the challenges progressed, they had to arrange non-adjacent numbers and memorize sequences hidden behind obscured squares on a touch screen.

Over a six-year period, the chimpanzees were tested on these tasks in the presence of varying audience sizes, from one to eight human observers, some familiar and some unfamiliar to the chimps.

The findings revealed that the chimpanzees’ performance was influenced by the size of the audience. Interestingly, on the most challenging task, the chimps excelled as the number of human observers increased, contrary to expectations.

Lead researcher Christen Lin noted, “The results suggest that the presence of humans may motivate the chimps to perform better, especially on difficult tasks.”

According to team member Shinya Yamamoto, this audience effect, previously associated with humans in society, may have evolutionary roots in the ape lineage.

While cautioning against direct parallels between human and chimpanzee behavior, Miguel Llorente from the University of Girona, Spain, suggested further research into how individual personalities among chimpanzees may influence the audience effect.

Overall, the study sheds light on the social dynamics and performance enhancement observed in chimpanzees when faced with an audience, hinting at intriguing parallels with human behavior in social settings.