Research team
Expertise
Multi-componential approaches to study great ape emotions using cognitive (e.g. Stroop effect, response slowing effect, explicit attention biases), behavioural (e.g. abnormal behaviours, self-directed behaviours) and qualitative (e.g. qualitative behavioural assessment) methods.
Comparative psychology of positive emotions: A multi-componential approach to understand affective states in man's closest living relative, the bonobo.
Abstract
Similar to humans, emotions in animals affect their daily lives in many ways. While human studies rely on verbal reports for measuring subjective emotions, we need to apply a different approach for measuring animal emotions. The intensity of emotions has long been studied using behavioural and physiological measures, but these measures fail to identify the emotional valence. Positive emotions appear especially challenging to identify. Recent findings suggest that emotions also affect cognitive processes like attention, judgement and memory and that biases in these performances may give insight in the valence of experienced emotions. This project focuses on studying emotions in man's closest living relative: the bonobo. The bonobo is considered the most suitable model for reconstructing our last common ancestor and hence is a keystone species in studying our evolution and identifying unique human traits. Bonobos have rich emotional lives and respond to the emotions of others in strikingly similar ways as humans. However, the degree to which emotions of bonobos affect their own behaviour, physiology and cognition is currently unknown. To this extent, this project aims to apply a multi-componential approach to study emotions, specifically positive ones, in the bonobo using behavioural, physiological and cognitive measures. Results will be integrated to better understand emotions in bonobos and how positive emotions affect their daily lives.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Eens Marcel
- Co-promoter: Stevens Jeroen
- Fellow: Laméris Daan
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project
A cognitive bias study into individual bonobo emotions.
Abstract
Just like humans, animals can experience emotions like joy, excitement, sadness and depression. However, unlike we do in human studies, we cannot simply ask animals how they feel. Scientists have used behavioural and physiological measures to identify animal emotions. Yet, these measures are difficult to interpret and often only measure the level of arousal of the emotions, and not if it is a positive or negative emotion. New insights from scientific studies suggest that the animal emotions influence cognitive performances like: attention, memory and judgement. Studying changes in an animal's cognition can thus give information about their emotional state. The proposed research project aims to study the cognitive performance of bonobos, one of our closest living evolutionary relatives, as index for their emotional state. Furthermore, we aim to complement and validate the results from the cognitive tasks with physiological and behavioural measures. Additionally, we want to study what individual characteristics determine these emotional states by asking questions like: are female bonobos happier than males? or, are bonobos that are less sociable moodier than social bonobos? Results from this project provide the opportunity to get a view into the mind bonobos and get a better understanding of their emotions. Because the bonobo is our evolutionary cousin, this will enable us to understand the evolutionary past of human emotions.Researcher(s)
- Promoter: Stevens Jeroen
- Fellow: Laméris Daan
Research team(s)
Project type(s)
- Research Project