Howard Chen
Pronouns: he/him
Research Mentor(s): Alexandra Rosati
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Psychology / LSA
Program: UROPF
Session: Session 5 (2:40pm – 3:30pm)
Authors:
Abstract
Curiosity is a key element of human cognition that enables information acquisition and learning. Understanding human curiosity requires not only disentangling how it works, but also pinpointing its biological origins. Our primate relatives provide a model of the evolutionary roots of curiosity, and a recent proposal which posits that group-living individuals with high social tolerance demonstrate higher curiosity when in proximity to other members. This social curiosity hypothesis is derived from work with different ape species, so examining more diverse species is necessary to fully test this hypothesis. In this project, we explore the social curiosity hypothesis by testing two macaque species, rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) and Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus). A total of n=100 monkeys were assessed for individual differences in both curiosity and sociality. Curiosity was experimentally measured through a task in which animals could approach and explore a novel object placed in their environment. Sociality was measured through observations of these animal’s interactions in their natural groups, using a composite score derived from the macaque’s affiliative interactions. Following the social curiosity hypothesis, we predicted that more socially gregarious individuals would demonstrate higher overall curiosity towards the novel object than their more socially isolated counterparts, as this tendency is thought to encourage conspecific proximity and incentivizes curiosity in the absence of threat. We further will compare patterns in the two macaque species that differ in the overall tenor of their social interactions, with Barbary macaques being more tolerant and the rhesus macaques more despotic. This will allow us to test if the social curiosity hypothesis applies to a broader range of species, further supporting the notion of curiosity being linked to complex social environments.
