In the study, Tamarin monkeys were put into a variety of situations where one monkey has the opportunity to help the other at a cost to itself, and vice versa. They made sure to use unrelated monkeys in the scenarios, as previous studies have shown that throughout the animal kingdom, cooperation is correlated with genetic similarity. In this particular study, two monkeys in separate cages next to each other repeatedly took turns at a task where one monkey could pull a lever that released food into the other monkey's cage but not their own.
What they found was that if a monkey refused to pull the lever and help out the other monkey, it did not affect that monkey's behavior significantly. Essentially, a "fool me once" was disregarded, and that monkey was still willing to help its peer who would not help them. But once a monkey refused to cooperate twice, the other monkey would also then refuse to cooperate - "fool me twice." Once this mutual altruism broke down from two consecutive acts without cooperation, not only would the monkeys never work together again, but even years later when they re-tested the experiment with the same monkeys, relationships of spite continued to exist.
So to me, the proverb is more an external representation of an innate animal capacity than it is some profound idiom constructed through intelligent reflection. The first part, "shame on you," was seen in these monkeys along with other animals in similar experiments - it did not necessarily hurt the relationship between the two actors, but it was definitely stored in memory for future interactions. And the "shame on me" part, represents that once an individual has refused to cooperate with you twice in a row, you shouldn't trust them anymore. Shame is a negative association with past actions, so if you look at the behaviors of ourselves and other animals in terms of costs and benefits for survival, this "shame on me" is an innate capacity for learning not to trust an individual who has "fooled you twice."
No matter how evolved the human race becomes, we continue to share many natural instincts exhibited by our less-evolved ancestors. What's interesting about this is the complexities that humans deal with in comparison to the simple decision the monkeys were forced to make in the controlled experiments. How many times have you (or a friend of yours) trusted in a friend or lover, only to be let down more than once? The relationship aspect of doing favors to benefit someone else with no observable self-gain is an important one because it can seriously impact the chances of someone making the decision to help, rather than not helping.
ReplyDeleteIt seems like what you're trying to get at is that this study should not be taken too seriously but it still sends a good thematic message. I don't know how relevant the question of altruism being something that one learns or is born with actually is. It's entertaining though. As far as the parallels between human and monkey behavior...there are way more similarities than you might think. This is a really entertaining BBC video displaying this...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSm7BcQHWXk&feature=fvw
ReplyDeleteIt actually was meant to be taken seriously, and I do think the question is very relevant. There have been many more studies with mutual altruism in birds, rats, monkeys, and other animals that all bring similar results. Animals are usually willing to help each other out a little bit even if it means no benefit to themselves. And more advanced primates are even willing to help each other out with some disadvantages to themselves.
ReplyDeleteAlthough mutual altruism is more prominently observed in a larger variety of animals when the animals are related to each other. One researcher even developed a mathematical formula for one animal's willingness to help another based on genetic relationship that has been observed in all kinds of birds, monkeys, rats, bats, frogs, and humans. Essentially, an individual will almost always help their kin or parents, then aunts/uncles/cousins, second aunts/uncles/cousins, etc.
It comes down to a theory that scientists call "genes eye view." Where you base your survival based on the survival of your genes and not yourself - its why the alpha male of a pack of gorillas will immediately jump to the front when a predator emerges, because the survival of his mates and his children and their children at the cost of himself will preserve more of his genetic information than the survival of himself and the loss of all of his family. The same formula is observed in birds who go and hunt for worms and then regurgitate it to younger birds even if it means not feeding themselves. And in very dramatic cases, some spiders will actually let their young eat them when they're born so they can have their first meal.
I definitely believe mutual altruism is innate, because as much as we may like to think we're special we're just very advanced animals. And if the same mutual altruism exists in such a variety of animals so different from each other genetically and who diverged in evolution so much longer ago than we did from monkeys, we definitely have it too.