Self-control has proven to be a major measure of intelligence in intelligent beings, as indicated by unusual experiments involving several chimpanzees, according to an article in the journal Current Biology.
“The fact that the connection between intelligence and self-control exists among other species of living things, and not just among humans, suggests that willpower may have played a large role in the evolution of the intellectual abilities of our ancestors. In the future, we plan to test whether this connection exists among other primates and other animals,”said Michael Beran of the University of Georgia in Atlanta (USA).
Back in the late 1960s, American psychologist Walter Mischel noticed a curious pattern - a high level of self-control in childhood and adulthood was directly related to high levels of intelligence and success in life, and vice versa. Subsequently, these conclusions were repeatedly confirmed, and now no one doubts their validity in relation to people.
Beran and his colleagues checked whether a similar pattern is typical for the closest human relatives - common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). With the help of a chimpanzee nursery in Atlanta, the scientists conducted the same marshmallow experiment among monkeys that Michel used to study self-control half a century ago.
In its framework, the experimenters invited children to the laboratory, seated them in front of them and showed a set of several sweets, explaining that they would get double the amount of sweets, cookies and marshmallows if they wait 15 minutes. After that, the scientists left the room, leaving sweets on the table, and secretly monitored whether the children succumbed to temptation or not.
Primatologists have developed an adapted version of this experiment, adapting it to work with monkeys, and conducted similar observations, while observing how the monkeys behaved. After completing these experiments, they assessed the chimpanzee's intelligence level using a kind of IQ test, and compared the results of these tests with each other.
As it turned out, chimpanzees do not differ from humans in this respect - the most patient and calm monkeys received the maximum marks in the test of intelligence. Interestingly, similar results were obtained last year by British scientists while observing the most intelligent birds, the New Caledonian crows.
As biologists then noted, crows and their relatives showed no less level of self-control than chimpanzees, solving simple problems of patience and quick wits. Thus, a high level of self-control can indeed be one of the hallmarks of intelligent beings.
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