Moral behavior in animals Frans de Waal

I was born in them boss where the

painter Hieronymus Bosch named himself

after and so I’ve always been very fond

of this painter who lived and worked in

the 15th century and what is interesting

about him in relation to morality is he

lived at a time where religions

influence was waning and he was sort of

wandering I think what would happen with

society if there was no religion or if

there was less religion and so he

painted this famous painting the Garden

of Earthly Delights which some have

interpreted as being humanity before the

fall or being humanity without any fall

at all and so it makes you wonder what

would happen if we hadn’t tasted the

fruit of knowledge so to speak and what

kind of morality we would have much

later as a student I went to a very

different garden is our logical garden

in in arnhem where we keep chimpanzees

this is me at an early age was a baby

chimpanzee and I discovered there that

the chimpanzee is a very power hungry

and wrote a book about it and at that

time the focus in a lot of animal

research was on aggression and

competition and I could be a whole

picture of the animal kingdom and

humanity included was that deep down we

are competitors we are aggressive we are

all out for our own profit basically

this is the launch of my book I’m not

sure how well the chimpanzees read it

but they surely seemed interested in the

book now in the process of doing all

this work on power and dominance and

aggression and so on I discovered that

chimpanzees reconcile after fights and

so what you see here is two males who

have had a fight they ended up in a tree

and one of them holds out a hand to the

other and about a second after I took

the picture they came together in the

fork of the tree and they kissed and

embraced each other and this is very

interesting because at the time

everything was about competition and

aggression and so it wouldn’t make any

sense the only thing that matters is

that you win or that you lose but why

would you reconcile after a fight that

doesn’t make any sense

this is the way bonobos do it bonobos do

everything with sex and so they also

reconcile with sex but the principle is

exactly the same the principle is that

you have a valuable relationship that is

damaged

by conflict so you need to do something

about it and so my whole picture of the

animal kingdom and including humans also

started to change at that time so we

have this image in political science

economics the humanities philosophy for

that matter that man is a wolf to man

and so deep down our nature is actually

nasty I think it’s a very unfair image

for the wolf the wolf is is after all a

very cooperative animal and that’s why

many of you have a dog at home which has

all these characteristics also and it’s

very unfair to humanity because Humanity

is actually much more cooperative and

impacting than you then they’re given

credit for and so I started getting

interested in those issues and studying

that in other animals so these are the

pillars of morality if you ask anyone

what is morality based on these are the

two factors that always come out one is

reciprocity and associated with it

there’s a sense of justice and a sense

of fairness and the other one is empathy

and compassion and human morality is

more than this but if you would remove

these two pillars there would be not

much remaining I think and so they’re

absolutely essential so let me give you

a few examples here this is a very old

video from the Yerkes primate center

where they trained chimpanzees to

cooperate so this is already about a

hundred years ago that we were doing

experiments on cooperation and what you

have here is two young chimpanzees who

have a box and the box is too heavy for

one chimp to pull in and of course it’s

fruit on the box otherwise they wouldn’t

be pulling so hard and so they’re

bringing in the box and you can see that

they’re synchronized you can see that

they work together they pull at the same

moment it’s already a big advance over

over many other animals who wouldn’t be

able to do that and now you’re going to

get a more interesting picture because

now one of the two chimps has been fed

so one of the two is not really

interested in the task anymore

now look at what happens at the very end

of this he thinks basically everything

so the two interesting parts about this

one is that the chimp on the right has a

full understanding he needs to partner

so full understanding of the need for

cooperation the second one is that the

partner is willing to work even though

he’s not interested in the food why

would that be well that probably has to

do with reciprocity is actually a lot of

evidence in primates and other animals

that they return favors and so he’ll

will get a return favor at some point in

the future and so that’s how this all

operates we do the same task with

elephants now with elephants is very

dangerous to work with elephants and

another problem is elephants is that you

cannot make an apparatus that is too

heavy for a single elephant now you can

probably make it but it’s going to be

pretty clumsy apparatus I think and so

what we did in their case it is we do

these studies in Thailand which just

plot makes is we have an apparatus

around of which there’s a rope a single

rope and if you pull on this side of the

Rope the rope disappears on the other

side so two elephants need to pick it up

at exactly the same time and pull

otherwise nothing is going to happen and

the rope disappears so the first tape

you’re going to see is two elephants who

are released together arrived at the

apparatus the apparatus is on the left

with food on it and so they come

together they arrive together they pick

it up together and they pull together so

this is actually fairly simple for them

there they are

I said that’s how they bring it in but

now we’re going to make it more

difficult because the the whole purpose

of this experiment is to see how well

they understand cooperation do they

understand it as well as the chips for

example so what we do in the next step

is we release one elephant before the

other and that elephant needs to be

smart enough to stay there and wait and

not pull at the rope because if he pulls

at the rope and disappears and the whole

test is over

now this elephant does something illegal

that we did not teach it but it shows

the understanding that he has because he

puts his big foot on the Rope stands on

the rope and waits there for the other

and then the other is going to do all

the work for him so it’s it’s what we

call freeloading

but but it shows the intelligence that

the elephants had they they develop

several of these alternative techniques

that we did not approve of necessarily

so the other elephant is now coming and

it’s going to pull it in

now look at the other idea that doesn’t

forget to eat of course this was the

cooperation reciprocity part now

something on empathy empathy is my main

topic at the moment of research and

empathy has sort of two qualities one is

the understanding part of it this is

just a regular definition the ability to

understand and share the feelings of

another and the emotional part and so

empathy has basically two channels one

is the body channel if you talk with a

sad person you’re gonna adopt a sad

expression and a sad posture and before

you know what you feel sad and that’s

sort of the the body channel of amount

of emotional empathy which many animals

have your average dog has that also

that’s actually why people keep mammals

in the home and not turtles or snakes or

something like that who don’t have that

kind of empathy and then there’s a

cognitive channel which is more that you

can take the perspective of somebody

else and and that’s more limited as few

animals I think elephants and Apes can

do that kind of thing but the very few

animals who can do that

so synchronization which is part of that

whole empathy mechanism is a very old

one in the animal kingdom and in humans

of course we can study that with yawn

contagion humans yawn when others yawn

and it’s related to empathy if it

activates the same areas in the brain it

also we know that people who have a lot

of yarn contagion are highly empathic

people who have problems with empathy

such as autistic children they don’t

have yawn contagion so it is connected

and we study that in our chimpanzees by

presenting them as an animated head so

that’s what you see on the upper left

and animated head that yawns and there’s

a chimpanzee watching an actual real

chimpanzee watching a computer screen on

which we play these animations

and so yawn contagion that you probably

are familiar with and maybe you’re gonna

start yawning soon now is something that

we share with other animals and that’s

related to that whole body channel of

synchronization that underlies empathy

and that is universal in the mammals

basically now we also study more complex

expressions this is consolation this is

a male chimpanzee he was lost a fight

and he’s screaming and a juvenile comes

over and puts an arm around him and

calms him down

that’s consolation is very similar to

human consolation and consolation

behavior it’s it’s empathy it’s empathy

driven that’s actually the way they

study empathy and human children is to

instruct a family member to act distress

and and they see what young children do

and so it is related to empathy and

that’s the kind of expressions we look

at we also recently published an

experiment you may have heard about it

on altruism in chimpanzees where the

question is do chimpanzees care about

the welfare of somebody else and effort

for decades it had been assumed that

only humans can do that the only humans

worry about the welfare of somebody else

now we did a very simple experiment we

do that on chimpanzees that live in

Lawrenceville in in the field station of

your keys and so that that’s how they

live and we call them into a room and do

experiments with them in this case we

put two chimpanzees side-by-side and one

has a bucket full of tokens and the

tokens have different meanings one kind

of token fits only the partner who

chooses the other one feeds both of them

so this is a study we did this Vicky

Horner and here you have the two color

tokens so they have a whole bucket full

of them and they have to pick one one of

the two colors you will see how that

goes so if this chimp makes the selfish

choice which is the red token in this

case

need to give it to us we pick it up we

put it on the table where there’s to

food we watch but in this case only the

one on the right gets foods and the one

on the left walks away because she knows

already that this is not a good test for

her then the next one is the pro-social

token so the one who makes the choices

that’s the interesting part here for the

one who makes the choices it doesn’t

really matter so she gives us now a

pro-social token and both chimps could

fit so the one who makes the choices

always get a reward so it doesn’t matter

whatsoever and she should actually be

choosing blindly but what we find is

that they prefer the pro-social token so

this is the 50% line that’s the random

expectation and especially if the

partner draws attention to itself they

choose more and if the partner puts

pressure on them so if the partner

starts spitting water and intimidating

them then this choices go down and they

actually don’t want to it’s as if

they’re saying if you’re not behaving

I’m not gonna be pro-social today and

this is what happens without a partner

and there’s no partner sitting there and

so we found that the chimpanzees do care

about the well-being of somebody else

especially these are other members of

their own group so a final experiment

that I want to mention to you is our

fairness study and so this this became a

very famous study under snow many more

because after we did this about ten

years ago it became very well known and

we did that originally with capuchin

monkeys and I’m gonna show you the first

experiment that we did it has now been

done with dogs and with birds and with

chimpanzees but we saw a brush and we

started out with capuchin monkeys so

what we did is we put two capuchin

monkeys side-by-side again these animals

they live in a group they know each

other we take them out of the group put

them in a test chamber and there’s a

very simple task that they need to do

and if you give both of them cucumber

for the task the two monkeys

side-by-side

they’re perfectly willing to do this 25

times in a row so cucumber even though

it’s really only water in my opinion but

cucumber is perfectly fine for them now

if you give the partner grapes the food

preferences of my capuchin monkeys

correspond exactly with the prices in

the supermarket and so if you give them

grapes there’s a far better food then

you create inequity

between them so that’s the experiment we

did recently we videotaped it with no

monkeys we’ve never done the task is

thinking that maybe they would have a

stronger reaction and that turned out to

be right the one on the left is a monkey

who gets cucumber the one on the right

is the one who gets grapes the one who

gets cucumber note that the first piece

of cucumber is perfectly fine the first

PC eats then sees the other one getting

grape and you will see what happens so

she gives a rock to us that’s the task

and we give her a piece of cucumber and

she eats it the other one needs to give

a rock to us and that’s what she does

and she gets a grape and see the other

one sees that she gives a rock to us now

gets again cucumber

she tests a rock now against the wall if

you need to give it to us and she gets

cucumber again so this is basically the

Wall Street protest that you see here

let me tell you I still have two minutes

left let me tell you a funny story about

is this this study became very famous

and we got a lot of comments especially

anthropologists economists philosophers

they didn’t like this at all because

they had decided in their mind I believe

that that that fairness is a very

complex issue and that animals cannot

have it and so one philosopher even

wrote us that it was impossible that

monkeys had a sense of fairness because

fairness was invented during the French

Revolution

so now and another one wrote a whole

chapter saying that he would believe it

had something to do with fairness if the

one who got grapes would refuse the

grapes now the funny thing is that Sarah

Brosnan who’s been doing this with

chimpanzees had a couple of combinations

of chimpanzees were indeed the one who

would get the grape would refuse the

grape until the other guy also got a

grape

so we’re getting very close to the human

sense of fairness and I think

philosophers need to rethink their

philosophy for a while so let me

summarize I believe there’s an evolved

morality I think morality is much more

than what I’ve been talking about but it

would be impossible without these

ingredients that we find in other

primates which are empathy and

consolation pro-social tendencies and

reciprocity and a sense of fairness and

so we work on these particular issues to

see if we can create a morality from the

bottom up so to speak which are

necessarily God and religion involved

and to see how we can get to an evolved

morality and I thank you for your

attention

you