Sarah Khatkhatay, SK Somaiya Vidhyadhar
No normal human walks off mid-conversation without saying goodbye, or it would just be impolite. Politeness calls for efforts to reduce the threat of action to an interlocutor’s face. Signals like waving to start or end a conversation or interaction is a behavior not seen outside of the human species until now. A research report published in the journal iScience documented what apes seem to do something similar. Social and power dynamics affected the communication efforts used between the interacting apes, the researchers said that these are mirror patterns similar to human politeness. The study aimed to explore the process of joint commitment in chimpanzees and bonobos.
Joint commitment
Most social animal species engage in cooperative and coordinated joint action activities. Joint commitment is a mental state and a process that reveals itself in the coordination efforts deployed during the entry or exit. It is the sharing of intentions and working together towards a common goal that leads to a mutual sense of obligation. Joint commitment can be viewed as a product or process in humans. As a product, it refers to the feeling of obligation to fulfill a commitment that has been established.
When joint commitments get reneged on, for instance, when a human feels unjust, that triggers emotions that can range from mild irritation to severe internal turmoil. To avoid creating an impression of unilateral disengagement, the exit phase comprises all the coordinated actions necessary to get out of a social encounter once the main business or the reason behind the encounter has been successful. The exit phase usually involves mutual, bilateral gaze and gestures. In a previous experiment of joint commitment, it was witnessed that two bonobos were interrupted while grooming, and used gestures to resume the interaction with one another. The two mutually gaze at each other and walk away ending the exit phase.
Joint commitment isn’t solely based on the feeling of obligation shared between two participants in fulfilling a shared promise. It also involves an agreement and then mutually fulfilling that agreement. For example in humans, entering a conversational commitment with eye contact or a “hello/hi” and signaling the wrap-up of a conversation with a “goodbye”. Researchers found that the great apes had a similar interaction pattern for the entry and exit process of a conversation.
Analysis
A total of 1,242 interactions were analyzed within the groups of bonobos and chimpanzees in the zoo. The entry signals in bonobos were exchanged by a mutual gaze before playing 90% of the time. In contrast, the entry signals between the chimps were 69% of the time. The exit signals or the phase was even more common. 92% and 86% of Bonobo and chimpanzees interactions involve exit signals respectively. These signals were simple gestures like touching, holding hands, butting heads, gazing before and after encounters, grooming, etc.
Closeness amongst the apes
Two other factors playing an important role in joint commitment were the social bond strength with partners and power (who had more power over the other). Bonobos are assumed to be more socially tolerant and egalitarian as compared to chimpanzees, it was found that the closer bonobos were with one another, the shorter the duration of their entry and exit stages. As in humans, interaction with a good or a close friend, less effort is required in communicating politely. However, the level of social bond strength didn’t seem to affect the chimpanzees’ entry and exit stages. The reason behind this could be the despotic power hierarchies. By this, it can be presumed that bonobos would generally be more sensitive to joint commitment and manifest more coordination efforts compared to chimpanzees.
Although we cannot dig up bones and check for fossils to look at how the evolution of our behaviour exactly took place. However, we could achieve that by studying our closest relatives: the great apes like chimpanzees and bonobos.
Also read: Can the circadian rhythm regulate food poisoning?
Reference:
- Heesen, R., Bangerter, A., Zuberbühler, K., Iglesias, K., Neumann, C., Pajot, A., Perrenoud, L., Guéry, J.-P., Rossano, F., & Genty, E. (2021). Assessing joint commitment as a process in great apes. IScience, 102872. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102872
- (2021) Like humans, apes communicate to start and end social interactions. Cell Press. https://phys.org/news/2021-08-humans-apes-social-interactions.html
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Author Info:
Sarah Khatkhatay, pursuing masters (2nd year) in biotechnology, is a hard-working student. She welcomes opportunities from every field of her course and is passionate about gaining more and more knowledge. She is attentive towards her work and tries to improve in every way possible. Sarah is seeking a role which allows her to continue learning and encourages her to flourish her work.
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