Chimpanzees Recruit the Best Collaborators
Have you ever thought about the origin of collaboration? I can honestly say that it’s not something that really crossed my mind, until I came across an 2006 article in Science entitled: Chimpanzees Recruit the Best Collaborators. This fascinating piece of work that explored the evolutionary roots of collaboration through an experiment that sought to test whether chimpanzees actively select ‘skills’ in other chimpanzees to make their collaboration succeed.
Part 1: To Collaborate or Not
The experiment was designed in two parts. In the first part, the researchers sought to answer a relatively simple question. Will an individual chimpanzee seek help from another chimp if faced with a problem that required two individuals to complete?
A chimpanzee was faced with the challenge of acquiring food located on a sliding tray. In one condition, the chimp could pull the tray and access the food without help, while in the other condition, the chimp needed the help of another individual to pull the tray close enough to get the food. Partner chimps were kept in a separate room so that subjects could choose to bring them in to help or not.
The testers ran two sessions with each condition and found that chimpanzees would typically recruit the help of a collaborator when faced with a condition they could not complete on their own. Further, the subject chimps were more likely to bring the partner chimps into the room in the second sessions, once they had already experienced the fruits of collaborating from the first session. By contrast, when the chimpanzees could slide the tray and get the food on their own, they chose not to bring the partner chimps into the room, leading to the finding that chimps will recruit a collaborator only when they need one.
Part 2: Are You a Good Collaborator?
With that finding in mind, the researchers created another experiment intended to determine if chimpanzees would select the most effective partner chimp with which to collaborate. In the second experiment, the sliding tray setup was the same as the first experiment, but in this version, the subject chimpanzee could release one of two potential partners. In the introductory session, when the subject chimp had no knowledge of how effective their potential partners were, they were equally likely to pick the effective or the ineffective partner.
In the second session though, subject chimps were significantly more likely to select and release the more effective partner to help them acquire the food tray. Even subjects who had previously sought help in the introductory session from the less effective partner, changed their preference to the more effective partner. This means that subjects were basing their selection of a partner on the results from the preceding session. Chimps that had help from an effective partner in the introductory session would select that partner again, while those that initial chose the less effective partner chimp would change their selection in subsequent tests.
Final Thoughts
This research has made me think about collaboration as a set of skills that has evolved and become more complex and refined over time. While it seems that chimpanzee’s typically approach collaboration as a way to further their own interests (getting food in the case of this experiment), humans will often collaborate to achieve something of collective interest. I find it fascinating to contemplate the tension we have between the evolutionary drivers that developed to protect us from potential danger (conformity, tribalism) and those that clearly have the potential to make us successful (collaboration, teamwork).
For some reason, I find it comforting to think that collaboration is part of our DNA; that it’s part of what it means to be human.
Happy collaborating!
The full citation for the research work is:
Melis, Alicia & Hare, Brian & Tomasello, Michael. (2006). Chimpanzees Recruit the Best Collaborators. Science (New York, N.Y.). 311. 1297-300. 10.1126/science. 1123007.
Scott Millar often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. Through Collaboration Dynamics, he offers a program in High Performance Collaboration, where he guides groups to explore the nature of collaboration, inclusivity, and innovation, and acquire new abilities to create the conditions that enable groups to contribute and thrive in challenging environments.
