Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: As a key building block in decision processes that shape individuals' health, wealth, and well-being, risk preference has the potential to influence the entire course of an individual's life and therefore presents wide-ranging consequences for society.Yet its biological evolutionary roots remain poorly understood, and tests are scant for the proposition that "modern attitudes to risk are, at least in part, the product of biological evolution" (Robson, 1996, p. 397; see also Karlsson Linnér et al., 2019;Robson, 2001).Here, we investigated whether risk preferences of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are isomorphic to human risk preferences in important respects.Chimpanzees are an ideal reference (The Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium, 2005): They are one of humans' two closest living relatives; they live in large, mixed-sex social groups; and they have similar developmental stages, with extended infant dependency, a period of adolescence, young adulthood, and long life expectancy of up to 50 years.Chimpanzees occupy a variety of habitats-from savannas to evergreen forestsand face myriad risks in their socioecological environments (de Waal, 1973;Goodall, 1968).There are theoretical reasons to expect evolutionary continuities in risk preferences.According to life-history theory, risk taking differs systematically across stages of life (Stearns, 1992).In the context of reproduction, sexual 1140326P SSXXX10.
Source: MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society)
Language: English
Subfield: General Decision Sciences
Field: Decision Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7163728854