Browsing by Author "Tomasello, Michael"
Now showing items 1-20 of 49
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A comparison of temperament in nonhuman apes and human infants.
(Dev Sci, 2011-11)The adaptive behavior of primates, including humans, is often mediated by temperament. Human behavior likely differs from that of other primates in part due to temperament. In the current study we compared the reaction of ... -
A test of the submentalizing hypothesis: Apes' performance in a false belief task inanimate control.
(Commun Integr Biol, 2017)Much debate concerns whether any nonhuman animals share with humans the ability to infer others' mental states, such as desires and beliefs. In a recent eye-tracking false-belief task, we showed that great apes correctly ... -
Children coordinate in a recurrent social dilemma by taking turns and along dominance asymmetries
(Developmental Psychology, 2017-02-01)© 2016 American Psychological Association.Humans constantly have to coordinate their decisions with others even when their interests are conflicting (e.g., when 2 drivers have to decide who yields at an intersection). So ... -
Children use salience to solve coordination problems
(Developmental Science, 2015-05) -
Children's developing metaethical judgments.
(J Exp Child Psychol, 2017-08-17)Human adults incline toward moral objectivism but may approach things more relativistically if different cultures are involved. In this study, 4-, 6-, and 9-year-old children (N=136) witnessed two parties who disagreed about ... -
Children's Intrinsic Motivation to Provide Help Themselves After Accidentally Harming Others.
(Child Dev, 2016-11-01)Little is known about the flexibility of children's prosocial motivation. Here, 2- and 3-year-old children's (n = 128) internal arousal, as measured via changes in pupil dilation, was increased after they accidentally harmed ... -
Children's meta-talk in their collaborative decision making with peers.
(J Exp Child Psychol, 2018-02)In collaborative decision making, children must evaluate the evidence behind their respective claims and the rationality of their respective proposals with their partners. In the main study, 5- and 7-year-old peer dyads ... -
Children's reasoning with peers in cooperative and competitive contexts.
(Br J Dev Psychol, 2018-03)We report two studies that demonstrate how five- and seven-year-olds adapt their production of arguments to either a cooperative or a competitive context. Two games elicited agreements from peer dyads about placing animals ... -
Children, chimpanzees, and bonobos adjust the visibility of their actions for cooperators and competitors.
(Sci Rep, 2017-08-17)Chimpanzees and bonobos are highly capable of tracking other's mental states. It has been proposed, however, that in contrast to humans, chimpanzees are only able to do this in competitive interactions but this has rarely ... -
Chimpanzees return favors at a personal cost.
(Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 2017-06-19)Humans regularly provide others with resources at a personal cost to themselves. Chimpanzees engage in some cooperative behaviors in the wild as well, but their motivational underpinnings are unclear. In three experiments, ... -
Chimpanzees, bonobos, and children successfully coordinate in conflict situations.
(Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2017-06-07)Social animals need to coordinate with others to reap the benefits of group-living even when individuals’ interests are misaligned. We compare how chimpanzees, bonobos and children coordinate their actions with a conspecific ... -
Concern for Group Reputation Increases Prosociality in Young Children.
(Psychol Sci, 2018-02)The motivation to build and maintain a positive personal reputation promotes prosocial behavior. But individuals also identify with their groups, and so it is possible that the desire to maintain or enhance group reputation ... -
Differences in the cognitive skills of bonobos and chimpanzees.
(PLoS One, 2010-08-27)While bonobos and chimpanzees are both genetically and behaviorally very similar, they also differ in significant ways. Bonobos are more cautious and socially tolerant while chimpanzees are more dependent on extractive foraging, ... -
Differences in the early cognitive development of children and great apes.
(Dev Psychobiol, 2014-04)There is very little research comparing great ape and human cognition developmentally. In the current studies we compared a cross-sectional sample of 2- to 4-year-old human children (n=48) with a large sample of chimpanzees ... -
Direct and indirect reputation formation in nonhuman great apes (Pan paniscus, Pan troglodytes, Gorilla gorilla, Pongo pygmaeus) and human children (Homo sapiens).
(J Comp Psychol, 2013-02)Humans make decisions about when and with whom to cooperate based on their reputations. People either learn about others by direct interaction or by observing third-party interactions or gossip. An important question is ... -
Fair Is Not Fair Everywhere
(Psychological Science, 2015-08) -
From imitation to implementation: How two- and three-year-old children learn to enforce social norms
(British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2017-06) -
Great apes anticipate that other individuals will act according to false beliefs.
(Science, 2016-10-07)Humans operate with a "theory of mind" with which they are able to understand that others' actions are driven not by reality but by beliefs about reality, even when those beliefs are false. Although great apes share with ... -
Great apes distinguish true from false beliefs in an interactive helping task.
(PLoS One, 2017)Understanding the behavior of others in a wide variety of circumstances requires an understanding of their psychological states. Humans' nearest primate relatives, the great apes, understand many psychological states of ...
