Researchers from the UK, Germany and the United States have shown that great apes have a basic ability to recognize false beliefs and can use it in social interactions.
A key feature of social cognition is susceptibility to false beliefs of others. This ability is described by the theory of mind, which was formulated in 1978 and consists in the understanding that the observed individual may have beliefs that are different from those of the observer, and the ability to act in accordance with this understanding. It is believed that the idea of someone else's consciousness distinguishes a person from other hominids (Hominidae): for example, children are subject to it already at the age of two. This was found out using a simplified version of the test: after the toy was hidden in different places, the children were asked training questions and only then were asked to guess where, in their opinion, the doll would look for it.
Meanwhile, in 2016, another group of scientists, using a non-verbal version of the test, found that chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), orangutans (Pongo abeli) and bonobos (Pan paniscus) can also predict (by the direction of their gaze) where the actor will look for a hidden rock. Based on this, the group suggested that the concept of alien consciousness is available to great apes. However, according to the authors of the new study, the design of the experiment had flaws. In particular, the work did not take into account the influence of false beliefs on the behavior of animals, which may simply look more often in the direction where the actor last saw the subject. In addition, it does not assess the ability of hominids to go beyond the beliefs of the observed individual.
New experiment design / © David Buttelmann et al., PLoS ONE, 2017
The Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and other institutions conducted two experiments to test the susceptibility of hominids to alien consciousness by their active behavior. At the first stage, two boxes that were locked with a latch were placed in front of the animal behind the glass. To imitate false beliefs, in the presence of the scientist, the assistant put a box with stones in one of the boxes, locked it, and they left. Then the assistant would return and transfer the object to another box. The scientist tried unsuccessfully to unlock the box, which, in his opinion, were stones, and passed the boxes to the monkey. The second experiment was carried out two to six months later and contained a stage at which the scientist did not know which of the boxes the box was in.
The analysis showed that in a situation of false beliefs, hominids more often (76.5 percent of cases) helped a scientist open another, "correct" box than in a situation where he knew exactly where the assistant left the stones (53.1 percent of cases). The aim of the second step was to eliminate the risk of the animal interpreting the scientist's error as ignorance: it is well known that monkeys can evaluate the extreme degrees of someone else's awareness. However, the inclusion of a new script did not change the relationship: compared to situations of not knowing, they more often helped to open the "correct" box if the assistant secretly moved the box. According to the authors, this indicates that hominids possess the concept of alien consciousness at least at the level of 18-month-old babies.
The article was published in the PLoS ONE magazine.
Denis Strigun
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