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Competition is crucial for social comparison processes in long-tailed macaques
No full textHumans modulate their self-evaluations and behaviour as a function of conspecific presence and performance. In this study we tested for the presence of human-like social comparison effects in long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis). The monkeys’ task was to extract food from an apparatus by pulling drawers within reach and we measured latency between drawer-pulls. Subjects either worked on the task with a partner who could access the apparatus from an adjacent cage or worked with a partner present who was denied apparatus access. Alternatively, they worked in the absence of a conspecific present but with food moving towards the partner’s side. We further manipulated partner performance and competitiveness of the setup. We found no indication that long-tailed macaques compare their performance to the performance of conspecifics. They were not affected by the mere presence of the partner but they paid close attention to the partner’s actions when they were consequential for food availability. If social comparison processes are present in long-tailed macaques, the present study suggests they may only manifest in situations involving direct competition and would thus be different from social comparisons in humans, which manifest also in the absence of direct competition, for example in evaluative contexts
Social disappointment and partner presence affect long-tailed macaque refusal behaviour in an ‘inequity aversion’ experiment
No full textProtest in response to unequal reward distribution is thought to have played a central role in the evolution of human cooperation. Some animals refuse food and become demotivated when rewarded more poorly than a conspecific, and this has been taken as evidence that non-human animals, like humans, protest in the face of inequity. An alternative explanation—social disappointment—shifts the cause of this discontent away from the unequal reward, to the human experimenter who could—but elects not to—treat the subject well. This study investigates whether social disappointment could explain frustration behaviour in long-tailed macaques, Macaca fascicularis . We tested 12 monkeys in a novel ‘inequity aversion’ paradigm. Subjects had to pull a lever and were rewarded with low-value food; in half of the trials, a partner worked alongside the subjects receiving high-value food. Rewards were distributed either by a human or a machine. In line with the social disappointment hypothesis, monkeys rewarded by the human refused food more often than monkeys rewarded by the machine. Our study extends previous findings in chimpanzees and suggests that social disappointment plus social facilitation or food competition effects drive food refusal patterns.DFG, German Research FoundationLeibnizScience Campu
Competition is crucial for social comparison processes in long-tailed macaques
Get PDFHumans modulate their self-evaluations and behaviour as a function of conspecific presence and performance. In this study we tested for the presence of human-like social comparison effects in long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis). The monkeys’ task was to extract food from an apparatus by pulling drawers within reach and we measured latency between drawer-pulls. Subjects either worked on the task with a partner who could access the apparatus from an adjacent cage, worked in the absence of a conspecific but with food moving towards the partner’s side or worked next to a partner who was denied apparatus access. We further manipulated partner performance and competitiveness of the setup. We found no indication that long-tailed macaques compare their performance to the performance of conspecifics. They were not affected by the mere presence of the partner but they paid close attention to the partner’s actions when they were consequential for food availability. If social comparison processes are present in long-tailed macaques, the present study suggests they may only manifest in situations involving direct competition and would thus be different from social comparisons in humans, which manifest also in the absence of direct competition, for example in evaluative contexts
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Social information sampling and decision-making: An evolutionary and ontogenetic perspective
Get PDFAn advantage of being a group-living-, as opposed to a solitary-species, is having the opportunity to engage with conspecifics in mutually beneficial cooperative activities. Choice of cooperation partner often decides whether a cooperative venture succeeds or fails. Cooperation therefore, calls for the careful evaluation of conspecifics. The ideal partner treats others well (shows commitment and values fairness) and has the requisite competence to be able to contribute to the task at hand. This dissertation, comprised of two studies (three experiments), aimed to further what we know about the social evaluation skills of humans and non-human primates. Specifically, I investigated how individuals evaluate others with respect to fairness and competence.
In Study 1, I investigated whether a catarrhine species - the long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis) - is sensitive to fairness. Experiments have shown that non-human primates refuse food if they are poorly paid for work compared to a conspecific. I investigated whether refusal behaviour is due to social comparison with the well-paid conspecific, or disappointment in the distributor who rewards poorly. I manipulated two factors: (1) partner presence and (2) type of distributor; half of the subjects experienced a human distributor, the other half a machine distributor. In inequality test conditions, subjects received low-value food while the partner (when present) received high-value food. In an equality control condition, subject and partner received the same low-value food. I measured food refusal behaviour. Study 1 revealed (1) an effect of distributor under conditions of inequality; monkeys who were rewarded by the human, refused food more often compared to those rewarded by the machine (2) no effect of distributor under conditions of equality; irrespective of distributor type, food refusal rates were low when both animals received the same value food and (3) monkeys worked faster when the partner was present, compared to when they were alone.
In Study 2, I investigated how four- to seven-year-old children evaluate and apply competence information in different co-action settings. I designed two online experiments to investigate whether the inference processes thought to be at play in cooperative contexts (trait-reasoning and simple heuristics), are evident in the competitive context - a second setting that calls for a similar strategic use of competence information. In Experiment 1, participants learned about the strength of two models - one model was strong, the other weak. In test trials, participants had to recruit a co-action partner for competitive and cooperative strength games and a co-action partner for either a competitive or a cooperative knowledge game. Experiment 1 revealed that the older children recruited rationally in both contexts for the strength games, and that children of all ages generalized in both contexts, transferring strength competence information to the knowledge domain. In Experiment 2, participants learned about the strength and object-labelling competence of two models (one model was physically strong but inaccurate at object-labelling, while the other model was physically weak but accurate at object-labelling). In test trials, participants had to recruit a co-action partner for competitive and cooperative strength and knowledge games. Experiment 2 was inconclusive. The children showed little rational recruitment behaviour in either co-action context.
It is possible to draw two conclusions from these studies. Study 1 shows that multiple factors mediate subjects’ food refusal behaviour in an impunity experiment; social disappointment in the human distributor, social comparison with the conspecific and food competition all had an effect on refusal behaviour in this experiment. A study limitation (the test conditions were run before the control conditions) however, means that it would be premature to conclude that the social comparison effect we observe, is evidence that long-tailed macaques perceive inequality (are sensitive to fairness). It is possible that by the end of the experiment, subjects were simply tired of refusing food. Future work that counterbalances condition presentation order, could clarify whether we are looking at a three-factor explanation in this species, or whether a two-factor explanation would suffice. From Study 2, I tentatively conclude that the inferential processes (trait-reasoning and a simple decision heuristic) thought to explain children’s partner recruitment decisions in cooperative contexts, are also present in the competitive context. Experiment 2 would have been necessary to confirm that trait-reasoning was behind the rational recruitment choices in Experiment 1. These two child experiments were run online. It would be valuable to obtain in-presence data to establish whether demands of the online setting masked children’s trait-reasoning abilities in Experiment 2.2023-05-2
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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