Monkeys better at managing money than humans!
Laurie Santos (36) runs Yale University's Comparative Cognition Laboratory, which examines the origins of the human mind by studying primate cognition. Many of her experiments try to determine the roots of human economic behavior.
The primate lab is home to 10 "shockingly smart" brown Capuchin monkeys trained to trade tokens for food. It was a short leap for Dr. Santos and her team to decide to study how monkeys make decisions about money.
The Yale researchers often draw from published studies of human economic biases to help design their experiments. Many surveys present people with sums of money like $1,000 and then try to gauge their feelings regarding losses or gains. With monkeys, the researchers knew they had to pick much smaller numbers. "Monkeys aren't as great with math," said Dr. Santos.
In one experiment, they gave each monkey a wallet filled with 12 flat aluminum tokens, monkey money that the animals could trade for food. Right away, the scientists saw the similarities to human behavior. When researchers slashed the price on certain foods, the monkeys sought out the best deal. They also typically spent all their cash at once and didn't bother to save.
The experiments that have been done so far show that many of our economic behaviors are deeply rooted. Still, there appears to be a place where the two species part ways.
Researchers wondered whether monkeys, like humans, desire an expensive item more. For the same number of tokens, the monkeys could choose whether they got a tiny square of blue sweet or a big chunk of red sweet. Later, the monkeys were allowed to choose which kind they wanted. If the monkeys were like humans, they would have gone for the blue sweet, the more "expensive" choice. But the monkeys gorged happily on both.
The researchers are still gathering and analyzing the data. One possibility: Human taste preferences are based on many factors, whereas the monkeys' are not. Some might argue that human economic behavior is more advanced since it includes "culture and meta-awareness" in decision-making, said Dr. Santos. There's another, less flattering possibility too. "The monkeys," she said, "are more rational."
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