This may all be just a bunch of monkey business, but Saturday’s Wall Street Journal (4-1-2012, C11) had a great article about the consumer behavior of monkeys (Capuchins to be more precise).1 Laurie Santos, a young scientist at Yale University, attempts to better understand the economic behavior of humans by studying ten Capuchin monkeys in her primate lab – to be more precise, in her “Comparative Cognition” laboratory.
Santos and her staff trained their charges to use tokens (e.g., money) to buy food. Her earlier studies of monkeys led her to conclude that, “You can’t watch them without realizing they care about the same things we do”.
In one memorable study, the monkeys were given twelve flat aluminum tokens (“monkey money”) that they could use to purchase food. Experimenters found that when the price of a particular food was reduced, the little critters searched for the best deal. And, consistent with most of their human counterparts, the Capuchins were not likely to save any money and spent their stash in a hurry. Like many of us, money appeared to burn a hole in their proverbial pockets.
But, here’s where the similarities between monkey and human commerce might diverge. The monkeys were given the choice, for the same number of tokens, to purchase a smaller square of blue Jell-O or a much larger square of red Jell-O. The idea being tested was whether monkeys, like humans, would prefer the more expensive blue Jell-O over the cheaper red Jell-O. But, however intuitively appealing this type of thinking might be, this was not to be the case. The little darlings ate either Jell-O with equal gusto. Some may be prone to argue that monkeys don’t have the mental capacity to make such complex decisions, or, as Santos quipped, the monkeys may simply be “more rational” as consumers than us two-legged types.
1 Source: Amy Dockser Marcus, “The Hard Science of Monkey Business,” Wall Street Journal, Saturday/Sunday, March 31 – April 1, 2012.
Very interesting that monkeys view the exchange concept similar to humans. My only question would be if the price of an item was kept the same for a while then increased, would the monkeys then seek out similar items that were cheaper. This would be similar to when humans go into a store to purchase a product that we saw advertised as being on sale but when we went to buy it the price had been increased so we buy a comparable product that is cheaper.
Interesting…. but can monkeys really understand the concept of money? Hmmmmm
They seemed to understand the value of money in that they would shop around when the price of a product was reduced and used tokens to pay for their food, but I am not convinced that they really understand beyond that if they exchange tokens they get food. They certainly were not swayed by the more expensive items. So, this either means they are more rational than us as consumers (which I doubt) or they are simply drawn to food in larger quantities.
How can monkeys even distinguish money and the concept of saving? I do not understand how they have the same capacity of thinking as humans.. what did this experiment end up proving?
Wow! This is really interestin!! I would like to further look into this experiment.
If anyone is interested here is the link to the journal article of the series of experiments in question and for those that do not want to read the entire article, here is a video by the researcher herself.
Journal article:
http://aida.econ.yale.edu/seminars/apmicro/am05/chen-050407.pdf
Video link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/laurie_santos.html
Thank you Sarah for sharing this information. I am going to watch the video right now.
This was a very interesting article and quite a peculiar take on consumer behavior. I think that the monkeys definitely have the mental capability to make decisions regarding various items, but does the monkeys not being able to choose the larger jello containing the same thing void out the rest of the experiment regarding the monkeys making choices based on price?
What a cute, yet interesting article! I would be interested to see if there are any other animals that would exhibit similar behavior.
I find the comparisons between humans and monkeys so interesting. I wonder if this experiment were to be repeated,would it bring the same results? Or if it were to be done using a different breed, would the results be the same? I took the class Introduction to Human Evolution my freshman year at Baylor. It was something I was just curious to hear more about, kind of like hearing another side of a story. It was very interesting (to an extent) how their behavior resembled some human behavior.
I found this study very interesting. I think the similarity in Monkey/Human purchase behavior may point to a basic instinct in our nature to accumulate for the present and not plan for the future with perspective. I do wonder about the reason the monkeys did not exhibit a preference for either priced Jell-O. Was it because they were incapable of performing such in-depth reasoning or, like us, did they just lack the patience to think out their options?
First of all I found this article to be intriguing because I am taking consumer behavior this semester so we have spent lots of time discussing human behavior. It is interesting to think that monkey behavior can be comparable to that of humans. My father has been to India multiple times and when you stay in hotels there you are instructed to lock the windows to your room because some monkeys have been trained by their owners to break into the rooms and search for things that are of value such as jewelry and money. I personally believe that monkeys have the the brain capacity to know the importance and value of money and what they personally can get in turn for that. In terms of having the choice between blue and red jell-O, sometimes people and monkeys alike just have their preferences, no matter what the cost is!
This article was fascinating. I would’ve loved to be present when the concept for this study was thrown out there. That would’ve been an interesting topic of conversation. It would be incredible to watch these little primates in economic action. I’m curious as to how they were taught about the system. I was also surprised by the fact that the monkeys didn’t seem to differentiate between the smaller, fancy blue jello and the larger, cheaper red jello. I would’ve assumed they would have gone after the larger portion but apparently they didnt seem to care and were just hungry. I also watched Sarah’s video, there’s so much I didn’t know about monkeys!
Monkeys/Apes/primates have always been my favorite “zoo animals”. In fact in some areas it’s even legal to own a Capuchin as a pet. They, not just Capuchins, prove to be extremely intelligent animals understanding many of the same concepts as humans, not limited to mourning the death of their offspring.
It doesn’t surprise me that the Capuchins were seemingly able to figue out the idea of shopping around for the lowest price. However, I’d be interested to see the results should the experiment be conducted with a smarter primate such as a Chimp or Gorilla.
Kristin, how do they measure intelligence in primates? Just wondering – I don’t know a lot about monkeys.
At first I wasn’t sure if these monkeys could really learn about the value of money, I thought they might just be learning the correlation between giving tokens and getting food. Then I realized the way people learn about the value of money is not much different. I still think that monkeys cannot make the same complex decisions with relation to the value of money that we can, but where did we come up with what money means? Humans are “trained” to think a certain way about what the value of money is. Goods, services, or money is only worth what we all believe it is. If the monkeys came up with their own system of what their money was worth in relation to food, it is no different than our own system of creating a correlation between money and goods.
This is such an inquisitive article. Part of me wants to agree with this whole heartedly, but also part of me wonders if this could even be true. It is so hard to believe that there are prodiminant similarities between the two of us. This reminds me of the new Planet of the Apes movie called Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Very interesting and touching movie. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. It is about a young scientist, played by James Franco, who tends to a young ape and over time the ape grows and begans to act more human like.
I love this! Thats largely in part because monkeys are my favorite animals and I am fascinated at how much they act like humans. I think this is really interesting, and would have loved to be a part of the experiment to see firsthand how these monkeys responded to the money. I think its funny that like humans, monkeys dont save their money, but spend it as soon as they get it. I was surprised that the monkeys did not have a preference in the jell-o. Naturally I would have thought they would go for the larger red jello.
Interesting article, just don’t really believe monkeys have the mental capacity to understand anything more than, “i need to eat, and these tokens give me food.” and being primal animals, they will instinctively go for the larger quantities of food.
I would have LOVED to see this experiment in action because I have no idea how it would work. I have no grid for monkeys, but it really is a testament to these researchers and to the species that they can be taught this economical process. I want to follow this more closely!
Great article. Who would have thought that animals could make decisions like that on their own. That’s a bunch of monkey business!