Researchers shed light on trading behavior in animals -- ... ( ATLANTA Humans from ancient exchang...)

Researchers shed light on trading behavior in animals -- and humans

Date:6/8/2009

ATLANTA Humans, from ancient exchanges of food to modern day home mortgages, have bartered or traded to receive something that they couldn't achieve on their own. It's the basis of the economy, and it requires a leap of faith to believe that each party will receive a payoff in return for taking a risk.

When confidence breaks down, such as what happened during the recent collapse of the housing market, the economy slows.

The willingness to take risk is based at least in part on the reputation of trading partners and may be unique among humans. Our closest evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees, aren't very good at it, according to new research by scientists at Georgia State University's Language Research Center.

Georgia State's Sarah Brosnan, assistant professor of psychology, and research scientist Michael Beran conducted a study to see if chimpanzees spontaneously bartered foods among each other, using tokens which represented those foods. While results indicated that the animals were cognitively able to understand trade, without enforcement from human experimenters, trade disappeared.

Chimpanzees are known to trade services, such as grooming for food, but the ability does not seem to extend to trading commodities.

Most of the trading of services seems to occur between partners who interact a lot, and so are familiar with each others' behavior. The chimpanzees thus know whether the risk is likely to pay off, and most of the time, what's being traded is a relatively inexpensive commodity.

"If I spend five minutes grooming you, but you don't groom back, I haven't lost very much," Brosnan said. "But I might not want to trade a food that represents 10 or 20 percent of my calories for the day if I risk getting noting in return. If you don't complete the trade, I've lost a lot."

One thing that may separate humans from chimpanzees is our third-party reinforcement mechanisms, Brosnan said. While chimpanzees rely
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Contact: Jeremy Craig
jcraig@gsu.edu
404-413-1357
Georgia State University
Source:Eurekalert

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Researchers shed light on trading behavior in animals -- ...( ATLANTA Humans from ancient exchang...)