Emotion and Empathy in Great Apes

PurposeThis study analyzes the significance of various attributes of developmental psychology developed by male and female students within higher education institutions (HEIs) in Cambodia. It also focuses on the mismatch between planned enrollments and the final selection of a course, and the knowledge and skills accessed during the study.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 463 students (267 female) was selected for a survey from two private and two public universities, located in both Phnom Penh and other provincial locations.FindingsIt was found that (1) the Cambodian Sustainable Development Goal targets related to quality education are likely to be achieved by 2030, but this will require close monitoring of the targets. While it is likely that the male ratio will be accomplished by 2030, this is less certain for the female ratio. (2) There was a mismatch between the planned enrollment and actual course selection for just under half (49.2%) of students surveyed due to high tuition fees, a lack of scholarships, unavailability of preferred courses, failure to gain admission and parental influence. This mismatch was higher for female students for all of these factors except for parental influence. (3) Students indicated a high degree of access to knowledge and skills, except for technological literacy, economic aspects and interpersonal effectiveness. Overall, male students were found to access a higher degree of both knowledge and skills. (4) The developmental psychology of students was found to be significantly influenced by decision-making ability, empathy, people skills, community engagement and voluntary work.Research limitations/implicationsThere were a number of limitations in carrying out this research. For example, discussions were separately organized at each university; the authors did not organize a consultative meeting gathering all the students from the four universities to discuss and get consensus. Moreover, the study did not cover the interviews of parents to gain their views regarding support for their children at HEIs.Practical implicationsImprovement in key aspects of developmental psychology for male students was found to be more significant than for female students, except for intellectual capacity.Social implicationsStill, improvement in the adopt of developmental psychology is required at HEIs in Cambodia and developing countries. Improved developmental psychology among students at universities has been shown to result in a significant enhancement in study performance and competencies. These competencies range from cognitive and intellectual capacity, associated with thinking and analysis; and emotional and social capacity, associated with the development of a societal vision. Students who develop cognitive and intellectual capacity tend to perform tasks more accurately and efficiently, make decisions more effectively and respond intelligently to new or complex circumstances. Students who develop emotional and social capacity are better guided toward focusing on caring for others in the community and establishing peaceful and safe environments. An important implication of the developmental psychology of students within HEIs in Cambodia is the holistic nature of education integrating knowledge, skills, competencies and social responsibility. HEIs should take on the role of equipping students with both cognitive and intellectual capacities for employment; as well as the emotional and social capacities required to build a society based on mutual trust and harmony. Improving the psychological development of students at HEIs in Cambodia may also be significant in achieving the CSDG targets. In terms of policy, HEIs should integrate opportunities for this to be included in the curriculum to increase the opportunities for students to engage in practice-based learning and community engagement activities. This will require providing sufficient learning materials and equipment to enable students to self-learn, think, analyze and innovate, using theories obtained in class, at home. This should be coupled with community engagement programs that provide students with the opportunity to work in the field. All knowledge and skills accessed by students should be integrated with the development of both cognitive and intellectual capacities. Further, social activities organized by HEIs are required to assist in developing the emotional and social capacity of students to interact with communities.Originality/valueThe paper is solely conducted and prepared by SOK Serey, CHEB Hoeurn, CHHINH Nyda, BO Chan Koulika and NGUONPHAN Pheakdey. The findings of the research produce both quantitative and qualitative information on the implementation of Sustainable Development Goals at higher education in Cambodia. In particular, this research is one of the most pioneer academic research studies conducted by a local scholar from Cambodia.

PurposeThis paper presents a review examining an Australian public sector competency framework through the lens of emotional intelligence (EQ) to answer the question “To what extent is the concept of EQ used to facilitate NSW public sector reform?” The purpose of this paper is to accentuate the importance of emotional capacity as an important capability to achieve reform goals, recognising the public sector’s deep organisational history and accepting that change is an emotional event, and that people achieve change.Design/methodology/approachA literature review drawing relationships between culture, change and emotion is applied to a capability framework for the public sector in the State of NSW. This review serves two purposes. First, it examines interacting factors that define the public sector context – a culture developed over generations, identity, the impact of culture on change and the relationship between change and emotions. The second examines a concept for its ability to transform this culture in a comparatively short time compared to its evolutionary history. Emotional capacity is framed by the EQ literature and is explored as a competency with particular focus in the NSW public sector. A ProQuest search using keywords Emotional intelligence and Public Sector or Civil Service; and Emotional intelligence and Public Administration located 22 studies across 14 countries looking at EQ in the public sector. These are supplemented by additional studies on EQ. The capability framework is examined against the elements of the only recognised standardised test for EQ (Fiori and Antonakis, 2011), the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test.FindingsThe examination concludes that emotional capacity is implicit, if not overlooked within the framework, with continued emphasis on technical and managerial competencies, evident of public sector management still encased in traditional paradigms. The discussion positions the development of emotional capacity as a high-order competency in a challenging reform environment.Research limitations/implicationsThe literature review may suffer from publication bias in both the literature cited in this review as well as those studies that have been published, particularly given the small amount of studies available within the public sector environment. The theoretical nature of the matching assessment is subjective and allows potential for variation in interpretation in both the meaning of the competencies and the matching to the four branches of EQ.Practical implicationsEmpirical research in EQ is limited in the public sector domain. The public sector has an embedded culture weighed with assumptions steeped in history. A public sector organisation is valuable for longitudinal studies as many employees stay for considerable years if not their whole career. Further empirical research within this sector in examining the impact of emotional capacity on cultural reform would enhance the knowledge in this field.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the limited literature examining the optimal competencies in particular emotional capacity for reform in the public sector.

Patterns of urinary cortisol levels during ontogeny appear population specific rather than species specific in wild chimpanzees and bonobos

Humans are, in essence, evolved apes carrying the genome that we shared our common ancestor with present-day great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans). Since the great apes are not highly social and, moreover, do not organize into permanent groups, it is likely that this low-level of sociality existed in humans’ common ancestor with the great apes, perhaps seven to 8 million years ago. It is argued that natural selection dramatically increased the hominin ancestors of human’s emotional capacities as a mechanism for getting around low sociality and lack of groups when these hominin ancestors were forced to begin living in open-country savanna conditions, where solidarity and groups would enhance fitness. Surprisingly, despite the many pro-social propensities evident in apes’ behavioral phenotype and underlying genotype, these were insufficient to increase sociality to the point of sustaining groups with high solidarity on the savanna. Hence, natural selection worked on the basic phenotype of hominins (and underlying genotype) to make them more emotional and, thereby, more social and group oriented. A methodology is outlined to test this basic hypothesis and is offered as a sociological alternative to either sociobiology or evolutionary psychology.

Chapter 2 discusses various authors who have defended the view that welfare subjects have different capacities for welfare, based on different cognitive or emotional capacities (DIF). Kagan defends DIF based on an objective list account of welfare. Singer’s defence of DIF was (formerly) based on whole-life preferentialism. Mill distinguished between higher and lower pleasures. McMahan introduces the notion of ‘fortune’. Wong distinguishes ‘experiential’ and ‘absolute’ welfare and defends differences in hedonic capacities. Budolfson and Spears relate welfare capacity to the number of brain neurons and thus cognitive capacity. I point out serious shortcomings of each of these defences of DIF.

In this review we attempt to reconstruct the evolutionary history of hominin life history from extant and fossil evidence. We utilize demographic life history theory and distinguish life history variables, traits such as weaning, age at sexual maturity, and life span, from life history-related variables such as body mass, brain growth, and dental development. The latter are either linked with, or can be used to make inferences about, life history, thus providing an opportunity for estimating life history parameters in fossil taxa. We compare the life history variables of modern great apes and identify traits that are likely to be shared by the last common ancestor of Pan-Homo and those likely to be derived in hominins. All great apes exhibit slow life histories and we infer this to be true of the last common ancestor of Pan-Homo and the stem hominin. Modern human life histories are even slower, exhibiting distinctively long post-menopausal life spans and later ages at maturity, pointing to a reduction in adult mortality since the Pan-Homo split. We suggest that lower adult mortality, distinctively short interbirth intervals, and early weaning characteristic of modern humans are derived features resulting from cooperative breeding. We evaluate the fidelity of three life history-related variables, body mass, brain growth and dental development, with the life history parameters of living great apes. We found that body mass is the best predictor of great ape life history events. Brain growth trajectories and dental development and eruption are weakly related proxies and inferences from them should be made with caution. We evaluate the evidence of life history-related variables available for extinct species and find that prior to the transitional hominins there is no evidence of any hominin taxon possessing a body size, brain size or aspects of dental development much different from what we assume to be the primitive life history pattern for the Pan-Homo clade. Data for life history-related variables among the transitional hominin grade are consistent and none agrees with a modern human pattern. Aside from mean body mass, adult brain size, crown and root formation times, and the timing and sequence of dental eruption of Homo erectus are inconsistent with that of modern humans. Homo antecessor fossil material suggests a brain size similar to that of Homo erectus s. s., and crown formation times that are not yet modern, though there is some evidence of modern human-like timing of tooth formation and eruption. The body sizes, brain sizes, and dental development of Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis are consistent with a modern human life history but samples are too small to be certain that they have life histories within the modern human range. As more life history-related variable information for hominin species accumulates we are discovering that they can also have distinctive life histories that do not conform to any living model. At least one extinct hominin subclade, Paranthropus, has a pattern of dental life history-related variables that most likely set it apart from the life histories of both modern humans and chimpanzees.

The ~1.6 kb NBPF repeat units in neuroblastoma breakpoint family (NBPF) genes are specific to humans and are associated with cognitive capacity in higher primates. While the number of NBPF monomers/Olduvai sequences in humans is approximately 2-3 times greater than in great apes, the difference in copy number values of canonical NBPF 3mer Higher-order repeats (HORs)/Olduvai triplets between humans and great apes is substantially larger. This study aims to analyze the organization and evolutionary significance of NBPF 3mer HORs/Olduvai triplets in fully sequenced primate genomes. We applied the global repeat map (GRM) algorithm to identify canonical and variant NBPF 3mer HORs/Olduvai triplets in the complete genomes of humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. The resulting monomer arrays were analyzed using the GRMhor algorithm to generate detailed schematic representations of NBPF HOR organization. The analysis reveals a distinct difference in NBPF-related patterns among these primates, particularly in the number of tandemly organized canonical 3mer HORs/Olduvai triplets: 61 tandemly organized canonical NBPF 3mer HORs/Olduvai triplets in humans, compared to 0 in chimpanzees and orangutans, and 9 in gorillas. When considering only tandemly organized 3mer HORs/Olduvai triplets with more than three copies, the numbers adjust to 36 in humans and 0 in great apes. Furthermore, the divergence between individual NBPF monomers in humans and great apes is twice as high as that observed within great apes. These findings support the hypothesis that the tandem organization of NBPF 3mer HORs/Olduvai triplets plays a crucial role in enhancing cognitive capacity in humans compared to great apes, potentially providing a significant evolutionary advantage. This effect complements the impact of the increased number of individual NBPF monomers/Olduvai sequences, together contributing to a synergistic amplification effect.

Harsh parenting (HP) entails physical and verbal expressions of anger and aggression toward children, usually observed as response to child negative emotionality. Abundant previous research has indicated the detrimental negative impacts of HP on children's developing behavioral, cognitive social, and emotional capacities, highlighting the need for examining its determinants. Among other determinants, previous research has suggested the importance of parents' cognitive regulatory capacity for inhibiting inappropriate behavioral responses (response inhibition; RI). Specifically, parents' RI may help prevent the translation of harsh tendencies into HP behavior. Previous research in the field has typically focused on investigating parents' trait capacities of RI, though particular state capacities of RI in the context of children's negative emotions might be more relevant. The current study is the first to investigate whether the latter more specifically associates with HP. Data were collected in 2019. Participants were 98 first-time parents (Mage = 31.85 years, SDage = 4.22), 68.0% mothers. Parents completed a computerized Go/No-Go paradigm, measuring RI in seven different background conditions: one neutral-gray background condition and six emotional face background conditions (infant negative/positive/neutral emotional faces and adult negative/positive/neutral emotional faces). Next, participants reported on their HP. Results indicated that parents' RI was significantly lower in infant emotional contexts, as compared to adult emotional contexts. Moreover, parents' RI was significantly lower in infant negative emotional contexts, compared to infant positive emotional contexts and infant neutral emotional contexts. Importantly, lower RI in infant negative emotional contexts is associated with increased HP. These results have important implications for affective science as well as practical implications for early detection and intervention of HP tendencies toward infants. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

To answer tantalizing questions such as whether animals are moral or how morality evolved, I propose starting with a somewhat less fraught question: do animals have normative cognition? Recent psychological research suggests that normative thinking, or ought-thought, begins early in human development. Recent philosophical research suggests that folk psychology is grounded in normative thought. Recent primatology research finds evidence of sophisticated cultural and social learning capacities in great apes. Drawing on these three literatures, I argue that the human variety of social cognition and moral cognition encompass the same cognitive capacities and that the nonhuman great apes may also be normative beings. To make this argument, I develop an account of animal social norms that shares key properties with Cristina Bicchieri's account of social norms but which lowers the cognitive requirements for having a social norm. I propose a set of four early developing prerequisites implicated in social cognition that make up what I call naïve normativity: (1) the ability to identify agents, (2) sensitivity to in-group/out-group differences, (3) the capacity for social learning of group traditions, and (4) responsiveness to appropriateness. I review the ape cognition literature and present preliminary empirical evidence supporting the existence of social norms and naïve normativity in great apes. While there is more empirical work to be done, I hope to have offered a framework for studying normativity in other species, and I conclude that we should be open to the possibility that normative cognition is yet another ancient cognitive endowment that is not human-unique.

To answer tantalizing questions such as whether animals are moral or how morality evolved, I propose starting with a somewhat less fraught question: do animals have normative cognition? Recent psychological research suggests that normative thinking, or ought-thought, begins early in human development. Recent philosophical research suggests that folk psychology is grounded in normative thought. Recent primatology research finds evidence of sophisticated cultural and social learning capacities in great apes. Drawing on these three literatures, I argue that the human variety of social cognition and moral cognition encompass the same cognitive capacities and that the nonhuman great apes may also be normative beings. To make this argument, I develop an account of animal social norms that shares key properties with Cristina Bicchieri’s account of social norms but which lowers the cognitive requirements for having a social norm. I propose a set of four early developing prerequisites implicated in social cognition that make up what I call naïve normativity: (1) the ability to identify agents, (2) sensitivity to in-group/out-group differences, (3) the capacity for social learning of group traditions, and (4) responsiveness to appropriateness. I review the ape cognition literature and present preliminary empirical evidence supporting the existence of social norms and nave normativity in great apes. While there is more empirical work to be done, I hope to have offered a framework for studying normativity in other species, and I conclude that we should be open to the possibility that normative cognition is yet another ancient cognitive endowment that is not human-unique. Originally published as: Andrews, K. (2020). Naïve Normativity: The Social Foundation of Moral Cognition. Journal of the American Philosophical Association, 6(1), 36-56. https://doi.org/10.1017/apa.2019.30

Psychiatry’s Climate Reckoning: Time Is Now

Probabilistic reasoning-the ability to predict outcomes based on the likelihood of different possibilities-is a key component of numerical cognition and is critical for navigating uncertain environments. However, it is unclear whether this capacity is shared with our closest relatives, the great apes, or with even more distantly related species such as the small apes. Here, we presented two gibbons (Nomascus leucogenys), two siamangs (Symphalangus syndactylus), and three chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) with a proportional probability task requiring them to reason from the distribution of items in a population to the likely contents of a sample. In contrast to previous research, we ensured that participants could not rely on two salient heuristics-the absolute quantity of the preferred item or majority sampling-to solve the task. We found that individuals of all species were able to distinguish between 0% versus 50% and 50% versus 100%, and that two individuals (one chimpanzee and one siamang) were able to convincingly distinguish between 33% versus 67%. These results suggest that an antecedent to probabilistic reasoning was shared by a common ancestor of humans, great apes, and small apes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

An Ape Ethic and the Question of Personhood

Cardiovascular diseaseis the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in zoologically managed adult great apes, accounting for 29%-77% of adult deaths in the North American population depending on the species. In an effort to better understand the underlying causes of heart disease, implantable loop recorders (ILRs) have been used in some cases to monitor great apes with suspected or known cases of arrhythmia. This is a 10-year review of the Great Ape Heart Project's experience of implanting 21 ILRs in 7 gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla; 9 total ILR devices), 5 chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes, 11 total ILR devices), and 1 orangutan (Pongo abelii, 1 ILR device) in an effort to develop effective methods for surgical implantation and remote collection of the data for analysis.

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Annual MeetingFull AccessAnnual Meeting Panel to Examine the Evolution of Physician Aid in DyingMark MoranMark MoranSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:26 Feb 2023https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2023.03.3.26AbstractPanel members will discuss the challenge of defining standards for “irremediability” in psychiatric disorders and will discuss the impact of expanding laws regarding physician-assisted dying on marginalized populations suffering from life distress.Physician Aid in Dying (PAD), also known as Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD) has been legalized or decriminalized in over a dozen jurisdictions around the world, and assisted dying policies continue to evolve, including in the United States. Many jurisdictions are exploring whether to introduce PAD laws or expand existing law to include PAD based on a mental disorder.“The psychiatrist helping patients to consider this unique and permanent request has a responsibility to assess for potentially treatable contributing conditions, including demoralization,” says John Peteet, M.D.This year’s Annual Meeting in San Francisco will feature a panel discussion titled “Physician-Assisted Death and Psychiatric Disorders.” PAD for mental disorders has been permitted for two decades in the Netherlands and Belgium, and 2023 marks the legalization of the practice in Canada (to be introduced as of March 2023).John Peteet, M.D., will explore how capacity for PAD may differ from capacity to refuse treatment. He is an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the psychosocial oncology and palliative care fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.“I plan to focus on the role of the psychiatrist in evaluating patients for capacity to request MAiD, which is a role we play in several U.S. jurisdictions now,” he told Psychiatric News. “I’ll be suggesting that rather than a straightforward assessment of depression and the intellectual understanding of what is involved, the psychiatrist as a physician helping patients to consider this unique and permanent request has a responsibility to assess for potentially treatable contributing conditions, including demoralization.”Case examples will illustrate that at stake is not only the patient’s cognitive capacity and DSM diagnosis, but also the patient’s emotional capacity and the professional and clinical responsibility of the doctor to the patient.K. Sonu Gaind, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and past president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, will review the Canadian experience, as Canada moves toward providing MAiD for patients with psychiatric disorders. Gaind is on the Council of Canadian Academies Expert Panel reviewing PAD for mental disorders.Marie Nicolini, M.D., Ph.D., psychiatrist and researcher at the Belgian Research Foundation Flanders and Georgetown University, will discuss the history of PAD for patients with psychiatric disorders in the Netherlands and Belgium.Panel members will discuss the challenge of defining adequate standards for “irremediability” in psychiatric disorders and patient requests for PAD and discuss the potential impact of expanding PAD laws on marginalized populations suffering from life distress. ■ ISSUES NewArchived