monkey banana box experiment

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Was the experiment with five monkeys, a ladder, a banana and a water spray conducted?

I've found the following picture online. It is about the moral/paradigm behind consistent behavior.

Image shows text and cartoon illustrations. Transcribed below.

Click to enlarge.

The image text says

A group of scientists placed 5 monkeys in a cage and in the middle, a ladder with bananas on the top. Every time a monkey went up the ladder, the scientists soaked the rest of the monkeys with cold water. After a while, every time a monkey went up the ladder, the others beat up the one on the ladder. After some time, no monkey dare[d] to go up the ladder regardless of the temptation. Scientists then decided to substitute one of the monkeys. The 1 st thing this new monkey did was to go up the ladder. Immediately the other monkeys beat him up. After several beatings, the new member learned not to climb the ladder even though he never knew why. A 2 nd monkey was substituted and the same occurred. The 1 st monkey participated on [ sic ] the beating for [ sic ] the 2 nd monkey. A 3 rd monkey was changed and the same was repeated (beating). The 4 th was substituted and the beating was repeated and finally the 5 th monkey was replaced. What was left was a group of 5 monkeys that even though never received a cold shower, continued to beat up any monkey who attempted to climb the ladder. If it was possible to ask the monkeys why they would beat up all those who attempted to go up the ladder ... I bet you the answer would be ... "I don't know — that's how things are done around here" Does it sound familiar? Don't miss the opportunity to share this with others as they might be asking themselves why we continue to do what we are doing if there is a different way out there.

This seems like an experiment, but now I'm wondering... Was this experiment ever conducted? If not, was any similar experiment conducted that shows the same effect?

13 There were several positive negative reinforcement experiments performed but this sounds like an extrapolation of predicted results combined with humanized responses. This story makes it sound like negative reinforcement alone can trigger this powerful anti social group behavior. Its a myth – Chad Commented Nov 4, 2011 at 18:31
16 You are probably anyway not allowed to do this kind of tests on monkeys any more. Nowadays you would need to use interns etc. – Martin Scharrer Commented Apr 12, 2012 at 9:16
34 You need ten monkeys. . . – Rory Alsop Commented Mar 28, 2013 at 13:27
33 Actually they seem to me like pretty darn smart monkeys. This effect is how humans avoid many dangers to astonishing levels of reliability, like traffic, poisonous berries, bad puns, and esoteric discussions. Oh wait. – Bob Stein Commented Jul 26, 2013 at 10:53
23 What @BobStein-VisiBone said. This story is told to show how people follow traditions mindlessly. But the monkeys are helping each other avoid a bad outcome. The consequences may be capricious (the researchers could stop spraying water), but the monkeys don't know that. If the contraindicated activity were eating poisonous mushrooms, we wouldn't think the monkeys were clever for occasionally eating some to make sure they were still lethal. Perhaps the real message of this thought experiment is that a tradition can have a good reason behind it, even if we've forgotten what that reason is? – Kyralessa Commented Jan 21, 2016 at 0:42

2 Answers 2

The earliest mention I could find of this experiment was in the popular business/self-help book, Competing for the future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad (1996). Here is the quote from the book:

4 monkeys in a room. In the center of the room is a tall pole with a bunch of bananas suspended from the top. One of the four monkeys scampers up the pole and grabs the bananas. Just as he does, he is hit with a torrent of cold water from an overhead shower. He runs like hell back down the pole without the bananas. Eventually, the other three try it with the same outcome. Finally, they just sit and don’t even try again. To hell with the damn bananas. But then, they remove one of the four monkeys and replace him with a new one. The new monkey enters the room, spots the bananas and decides to go for it. Just as he is about to scamper up the pole, the other three reach out and drag him back down. After a while, he gets the message. There is something wrong, bad or evil that happens if you go after those bananas. So, they kept replacing an existing monkey with a new one and each time, none of the new monkeys ever made it to the top. They each got the same message. Don’t climb that pole. None of them knew exactly why they shouldn’t climb the pole, they just knew not to. They all respected the well established precedent. EVEN AFTER THE SHOWER WAS REMOVED! ( Source )

The authors did not provide a source for this claim. This story was later repeated in various other popular business/self-help books.

Every source online I could find erroneously attributed the experiment to one of the above authors. No one, anywhere , seems to have a reference to the actual experiment.

C. K. Prahalad is deceased, but Gary Hamel is still alive. I tried contacting him several times, but unfortunately both he and his secretary were very evasive. The best I could get was

Our apologies, but Professor Hamel does not have the original source information at hand in terms of your request.

Given that there seems to be no evidence anywhere of this experiment ever actually taking place, that all trails of references eventually lead to the claim in this book, and that this is the earliest available mention of the experiment, until further evidence becomes available the most reasonable conclusion is that C. K. Prahalad or Gary Hamel made up the experiment for their book.

Even if the above authors were not the creators of the myth, there is still reason to believe that, as @Chad puts it (comments above), this claim is an "extrapolation of predicted results combined with humanized responses."

Here is a quote from an "anthropology professor who's worked with hundreds of monkeys over the last 30 years." When asked what he thought of the experiment, he responded succinctly with:

If you have bananas on a pole, you'll lose your bananas.

27 That last quote is interesting, I'm still wondering what Gary Hamel has to say about that. – Tamara Wijsman Commented Nov 4, 2011 at 21:06
5 @Tom: see edit. I've given up trying to contact him. Perhaps if more people ask , we can get a better response. – BlueRaja - Danny Pflughoeft Commented Nov 28, 2011 at 18:47
226 Followup question: if 4 more people replied that it's not a real experiment, would the next person reply without even bothering to do the research? – JeffSahol Commented Aug 5, 2013 at 17:58
17 The human version of this experiment: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments – Pacerier Commented Jul 3, 2015 at 10:59
50 It's not a real experiment. Source: everyone else told me it wasn't real when I got here. – Dan Henderson Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 16:47

TL;DR: It sounds like a similar monkey experiment did take place, and the results were similar to that presented in the picture, but if this is the same experiment, most of the details are wrong.

The first google result for monkeys ladder experiment contains to the following information:

Stephenson (1967) trained adult male and female rhesus monkeys to avoid manipulating an object and then placed individual naïve animals in a cage with a trained individual of the same age and sex and the object in question. In one case, a trained male actually pulled his naïve partner away from the previously punished manipulandum during their period of interaction, whereas the other two trained males exhibited what were described as "threat facial expressions while in a fear posture" when a naïve animal approached the manipulandum. When placed alone in the cage with the novel object, naïve males that had been paired with trained males showed greatly reduced manipulation of the training object in comparison with controls. Unfortunately, training and testing were not carried out using a discrimination procedure so the nature of the transmitted information cannot be determined, but the data are of considerable interest.

Sources: Stephenson, G. R. (1967). Cultural acquisition of a specific learned response among rhesus monkeys. In: Starek, D., Schneider, R., and Kuhn, H. J. (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, pp. 279-288.

Mentioned in: Galef, B. G., Jr. (1976). Social Transmission of Acquired Behavior: A Discussion of Tradition and Social Learning in Vertebrates. In: Rosenblatt, J.S., Hinde, R.A., Shaw, E. and Beer, C. (eds.), Advances in the study of behavior, Vol. 6, New York: Academic Press, pp. 87-88.

The above quote is found on page 88 of the 1976 document quoted above .

It is possible the claim is referring to this experiment, with diverging details, or that another experiment took place that was closer to the details in the claim.

14 @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft, after reading the paper link bellow, it does look like the beginning of the described experiment; learning passed on. It does fail to join all subjects that haven't interacted with the object and have them pass their knowledge to their fellow kin. I would say the folloing 'anecdote' uses the basis for this experiment and greatly builds upon it. The answer to the OP would be NO, it hasn't. scribd.com/doc/73492989/… – Frankie Commented Apr 15, 2013 at 18:30
4 Stephenson's paper: erikbuys.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/… . – amoeba Commented Sep 14, 2017 at 9:41

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The Monkeys, Bananas And Ladder Experiment: Obeying Absurd Rules

It is a story that many of us have heard in conversations that talk about the acceptance of norms by the masses.

A seemingly simple experiment, with a small group of monkeys that are stuck in a cage and a few bananas that they could try to reach

Table of Contents

The monkey, ladder and banana experiment

As in almost all research that studies animal behavior, the experiment begins with a cage. Inside it are placed 5 healthy monkeys and, in the center of the room, a ladder with bananas at the top.

As expected, It doesn’t take long for the monkeys to start climbing the ladder to reach the food However, his plan is interrupted each time by an unpleasant surprise: every time a monkey climbs the steps, the researchers spray the rest of the primates with cold water.

This means that each attempt to access the bananas becomes a major reprimand from the monkeys towards the individual who tries: shouting, hitting, biting… anything goes to ensure that no one else has a similar occurrence. These practices were quite effective: After a while, no monkey tried to pick up the bananas, despite the temptation to eat them But the interesting part of the example comes later.

Introducing some changes

At this point, the researchers take one monkey out of the cage and put another in its place. This “newbie” sees the bananas on the ladder and, since he has not been able to find out what happens to those who try to do something, he receives the blows and screams of the others: the fear of ice water continues being present. This monkey does not understand the reason for this punishment, since he has not witnessed how the cold water falls, but after a few attempts he simply concludes that trying to reach the bananas is not a good idea.

Once this is done, the researchers replace another of the monkeys with a new one. This newcomer does the same as the first when he sees the bananas and the ladder, and the response of the rest is the same: punishment. However, On this occasion the first novice monkey also participates in the reprimand

From that point on, the researchers replace all the monkeys until none of the 5 monkeys remaining in the cage have witnessed the fall of the ice water. When someone tries to climb the ladder, these animals continue to react with the same violence as the five monkeys from the beginning.

The fable of obedience to the rules

This story is about carrying out an experiment, but, although its setting has to do with what happens in some psychology and zoology laboratories, this research does not exist as such: it has not been carried out and, therefore, There is no conclusion of scientific value that can be drawn from it

However, that does not mean that the story has no value as a fable. And the story of the monkeys, the bananas and the ladder is an example of blind obedience to norms on the part of a group

The first five monkeys had objective reasons for not wanting anyone to climb the ladder: every time they did, they were punished. However, the other monkeys obeyed the rules without having any reason to do so And not only did they obey them, but they perpetuated them through their behavior. The no-climb-the-stairs rule, despite its absurdity, had become part of their lives, to the point where they invested time and effort in making it continue to exist. Can the same thing happen with the norms that we human beings choose to reproduce through our actions?

The Five Monkeys Experiment & Its Lessons for Your Organization

As executives and C-level officers of successful companies, we are all trained to think logically, make well-considered decisions, and take measured steps toward the success of our organizations. Yet despite our best efforts, sometimes it can seem like we’re looking at problems through a fogged mirror—until now!

Many forward-thinking organizations have used the Five Monkeys Experiment as an eye-opener when examining organizational structures and taking that extra step towards increased business efficiency. At ProServeIT , we believe in the power of innovation and creativity. That's why we encourage our employees to think outside the box and come up with new and innovative solutions to help our clients achieve their goals. Through this experiment, let's discover what happens when you stop expecting routine obedience from employees but instead allow their ideas and creativity to thrive.

In a hurry? Jump straight to your section of interest.

🐒 What is the Five Monkeys Experiment? 💡 What can the Five Monkeys Experiment Teach Us? 😯 2 Questions to Help Avoid Five Monkeys Experiment “Syndrome” 🏁 Conclusion

What is the Five Monkeys Experiment?

If you haven’t heard about the Five Monkeys Experiment, it goes a little something like this:

A researcher puts five monkeys in a cage. There’s a bunch of bananas hanging from a string, with a ladder leading to the bananas. When the first monkey goes for the bananas, the researcher sprays all five monkeys with freezing water for five minutes. Sometime later, when a second monkey inevitably tries to go for the bananas, the researcher once again sprays all five monkeys with the cold water for five minutes. The researcher then puts the hose away and never touches it again. But, when a third monkey tries to go for the bananas, the other four attack him to prevent him from climbing that ladder. They are afraid of the punishment that may come.

Then, the researcher replaced one of the monkeys with a new monkey who wasn’t part of the original experiment and was never sprayed with water. And as soon as he touches the ladder to go for the bananas, the other four monkeys attack him to keep him from doing so.  If he tries again, they attack him again. Thus, the new monkey learns not to go after the bananas because he’ll get attacked if he does.

The researcher replaces a second monkey with another new monkey. When this monkey goes for the bananas, the other four attack him, including the new monkey never sprayed with water . The researcher then continues to replace all the monkeys one at a time until all five original monkeys are removed from the cage. Each time the newcomer goes for the bananas, the others attack, even when they, as new monkeys, have never received punishment for going after the bananas. And thus, the new monkeys, who have never been sprayed with cold water, learn not to go after the temptation of the bananas.

The researchers hypothesize that if they ask the monkeys why they don’t go for the bananas, they’d answer, “because that’s the way it’s always been done.” That’s what we call the Five Monkey Experiment “Syndrome.”

What can the Five Monkeys Experiment Teach Us?

There’s controversy over whether the Five Monkeys experiment even happened. Still, as business owners and CEOs, there’s a lot to learn from this, even if it’s only viewed as an analogy. The five monkeys experiment says a lot about the pervasiveness of traditions within an organization.

Traditions are a part of every organization, especially if the majority of the workforce has been around for some time. Those traditions can be detrimental to progress within your workplace, especially when new employees are stopped from pursuing new ideas. By focusing on doing something the way it’s always been done because it’s tradition to do it that way, organizations are often rendered blind to new ways that they can get the “banana” (the prize they’re going after).

Quality technology strategies and digital transformation can help organizations place themselves on the path to future success. Similar to the Five Monkeys experiment, even when no restraints are applied, organizations still succumb to peer pressure or the status quo and refrain from thinking strategically about their technology. Complacency has hindered many companies from unlocking their digital future. The shock is often revealed during challenging economic times or the appearance of an industry disruptor that critically impacts an organization’s revenue stream.

There are clear steps that you can take to ensure strategic thinking for your technology is part of your business success story and not your biggest downfall. By leveraging technology change as an accelerator of growth rather than a cost-cutting measure, you can create something truly transformative.

Decide to invest time into digital transformation and technology strategy-building actively – find out what you need now and develop a roadmap for the future of your organization’s technology investments and design proactive initiatives based on your organization’s strategic objectives.

The Five Monkeys experiment, therefore, teaches us that we need to be constantly challenging ourselves to look at things from a new light (technology or otherwise), to question things that don’t always feel right, and to avoid using the excuse of “we’ve always done it this way” to avoid trying new things and branching out in new directions. In other words, if we want that “banana,” there are times that we’re going to need to get creative or let those new employees try new things.

So, how can you make sure that you’re building a culture that doesn’t douse creativity, ingenuity, or innovation and instead encourages experimental problem-solving? In the next section, we’ll look at two critical questions you should consider asking yourself about your work environment.

2 Questions to Consider To Avoid Five Monkeys Experiment “Syndrome.”

There’s no denying the fact that digital and Cloud transformation is constantly and rapidly changing the way that employees communicate and work with each other. This means that an attitude of “we’ve always done it this way” will no longer be a viable way to run your organization.

Here are two important questions you need to consider that will help you to avoid the Five Monkeys experiment “syndrome” in your organization:

1. Does your organization’s culture encourage open dialogue and collaboration?

Giving your employees the chance to engage in open dialogue and collaborate with one another on various projects and initiatives is, in this day and age, necessary to maintain their interest in working for you. Today’s workforce is all about collaboration – when you look at the available technology, it’s clear that collaboration is not only encouraged, but employees are demanding it!

By using Cloud-based programs like Office 365 ,  Microsoft Teams , Workplace from Meta , Slack, and others, you can show your employees that you value their input and you’re open to exploring options that may challenge the status quo – the complete opposite of the results from the Five Monkeys experiment.

The truth is that your employees are always looking for a better employee experience to help them genuinely feel engaged by their work, connected to the values of their company, and for their voices/thoughts/ideas to be acknowledged by upper management.

Did you know that highly engaged employees are 12x less likely to leave their company than those not engaged? Creating a better work culture where employees (remote or in-person) can collaborate and voice their concerns should be more than just a “retention” strategy.

This should be woven into building a rich employee experience that provides employees with the healthy environment needed to give their best (or far more than that) to help an organization that invests in them.

Reimagine your digital employee experience with the help of Microsoft Viva . This cutting-edge employee experience platform brings together communications, knowledge, and learning resources and then integrates them into a smooth flow of workflow for all employees.

Want to “dip your toes” into the Viva experience? Check out one of our Microsoft Viva classes today!

2. Does your organization reward and recognize innovative thinkers?

How do you recognize those employees who go above and beyond to develop innovative solutions? Do you recognize employees that take risks and try new and innovative ideas? To avoid the five monkeys syndrome in your organization, it’s essential to encourage your employees to seek out those new ways to get the “banana” and recognize the employees who do so, even if their ideas fail spectacularly.

In this case, failure should not be condemned because it can be a great learning experience for the employee, the team, and the organization as a whole.

Is Your Organization Stuck in a Five Monkeys Experiment Pattern?

The lessons that we can get from the five monkeys experiment are clear – we need to stop dousing our creativity with cold water, allow all of our employees the chance to take risks (and to fail, if it comes to that), and really foster and promote a culture of innovation within our workplace. 

Easier said than done? The good news is that the right technology framework can help you with this! Why not talk to our experts to see how implementing the right technology can be a good first step in your journey? Let us help you get started in enhancing your corporate culture today!

S tay up to date with ProServeIT! 📨

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Organizational Culture and the 5 Monkeys Experiment

May 26, 2020

Written by Intersol Group

Have you ever heard the story of the 5 Monkeys Experiment? It may sound familiar when you think of your organizational culture. It goes like this:

5 monkeys were placed in a cage as part of an experiment. In the middle of the cage was a ladder with bananas on the top rung. Every time a monkey tried to climb the ladder, the experimenter sprayed all of the monkeys with icy water. Eventually, each time a monkey started to climb the ladder, the other ones pulled him off and beat him up so they could avoid the icy spray. Soon, no monkey dared go up the ladder.

The experimenter then substituted one of the monkeys in the cage with a new monkey. The first thing the new monkey did was try to climb the ladder to reach the bananas. After several beatings, the new monkey learned the social norm. He never knew “why” the other monkeys wouldn’t let him go for the bananas because he had never been sprayed with ice water, but he quickly learned that this behaviour would not be tolerated by the other monkeys.

One by one, each of the monkeys in the cage was substituted for a new monkey until none of the original group remained. Every time a new monkey went up the ladder, the rest of the group pulled him off, even those who had never been sprayed with the icy water.

By the end of the experiment, the 5 monkeys in the cage had learned to follow the rule (don’t go for the bananas), without any of them knowing the reason why (we’ll all get sprayed by icy water). If we could have asked the monkeys for their rationale behind not letting their cage mates climb the ladder, their answer would probably be: “I don’t know, that’s just how its always been done.”

This story, whether real or a fable, captures a pervasive theme in many organizational cultures: We tend to do things the way we’re told they’ve always been done without questioning or revisiting the reason behind it, even long after that reason ceases to exist.

Do you feel like a caged monkey in your current work environment? Here’s some advice as it relates to organizational culture: Next time someone tells you “that’s not how we do things”, ask them why. If they can’t tell you, tell them about the 5 monkeys!

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JLB1568 | ‘Monkey Ladder Banana’ Experiment and Primary Sources

In this video I explain the importance of using primary sources to support ones claims, and focus on the example of the oft-cited ‘Monkey Ladder Banana’ experiment. This experiment involved five monkeys in a cage who were all sprayed with water if any of them climbed a ladder to get bananas; soon they learned to physically harm any fellow monkey who tried to climb the ladder, and this custom was passed on even to new monkeys entering the cage who had never been sprayed with water.

Backup video

Original youtube upload

LINKS: Cartoon: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-social-experiment-where-monkeys-were-punished-and-beat-all-other-monkeys-attempting-to-climb-a-ladder-a-real-experiment-or-just-clever-fiction Throwcase: http://www.throwcase.com/2014/12/21/that-five-monkeys-and-a-banana-story-is-rubbish/ PsychologyToday: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/what-monkeys-can-teach-us-about-human-behavior-facts-fiction StackExchange: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-experiment-with-five-monkeys-a-ladder-a-banana-and-a-water-spray-condu

NOTE: If you websearch for ‘pdf Stephenson, G. R. (1967). Cultural acquisition of a specific learned response among rhesus monkeys. In: Starek, D., Schneider, R., and Kuhn, H. J. (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, pp. 279-288.’ you will be able to find a copy.

Post updated 3-Aug-2022 to add backup video.

JLBE1567 | Fakeologist Audiochat Recap
JLBE1569 | JLB Wins Golden Jeffrey at 2015 Sleeple’s Choice Awards

….@ the intersection of learning & performance

Thoughts on people and the workplace, the monkey experiment and edgar schein.

April 2, 2014. A reader brought to my attention that the research cited in this post is suspect. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/what-monkeys-can-teach-us-about-human-behavior-facts-fiction ). After a little digging, it appears that the story originated in a credible business book, “ Competing for the Future ” by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad. One writer went so far as to contact Hamel’s office to obtain the actual research cited in the book, and apparently received a brush off. So while this makes a good story to support theories on organizational culture, perhaps it should merely be taken as that – a good story. But…I have seen the behavior in 30-some years of corporate work and the message is sound.

One of many “funny” emails floating around the internet contained the story of the monkey, banana and water spray experiment. I was pretty sure it was true ( because I’ve seen it happen – but not with monkeys ), but I wanted to source it anyway.

But let’s take it to the topic of organizational culture. Edgar Schein talks about the “ unconscious, taken-for-granted beliefs, perceptions, thoughts and feelings. The ultimate source of values and action.” (Schein, 2004) This is the part that you see but it is difficult to understand “the why”. Often, these assumptions conflict with the “artifacts” and “values” that are talked about and written on posters and intranets.

A practical example. A healthcare organization is exceedingly proud of their strong culture of caring for patients. Everything from their new employee orientation to their performance management program focus on caring, quality and speaking up when they saw something wrong.

But several years ago, a new nurse just out of orientation publicly corrected a physician and was publicly “flogged”. That nurse became a mentor to several other nurses, and quickly explained that what they learned in orientation about speaking up was erroneous, and they would actually be subject to discipline if they challenged a physician or a more senior nurse.

Year after year, the unspoken rule is handed down, and the energy and excitement of hearing the values at orientation gives way to cynicism and silence.

Does this really happen? You betcha!

What do to? The answer isn’t really difficult, but it takes courage to execute. The answer lies in asking good questions, observing behavior and understanding what those underlying assumptions are. And here’s the key….once that is known, leadership has to make change to bring the artifacts and values in line with the assumptions. Sounds easy, doesn’t it. So why don’t more organizations do this?

“Did the monkey banana and water spray experiment ever take place? Answer:

The Monkey Banana and Water Spray Experiment The experiment is real (scientific study cited below). This experiment involved 5 monkeys (10 altogether, including replacements), a cage, a banana, a ladder and, an ice cold water hose. The Experiment- Part 1 5 monkeys are locked in a cage, a banana was hung from the ceiling and a ladder was placed right underneath it. As predicted, immediately, one of the monkeys would race towards the ladder, to grab the banana. However, as soon as he would start to climb, the researcher would spray the monkey with ice-cold water. but here’s the kicker- In addition, he would also spray the other four monkeys… When a second monkey tried to climb the ladder, the researcher would, again, spray the monkey with ice-cold water, As well as the other four watching monkeys; This was repeated again and again until they learned their lesson Climbing equals scary cold water for EVERYONE so No One Climbs the ladder. The Experiment- Part 2 Once the 5 monkeys knew the drill, the researcher replaced one of the monkeys with a new inexperienced one. As predicted, the new monkey spots the banana, and goes for the ladder. BUT, the other four monkeys, knowing the drill, jumped on the new monkey and beat him up. The beat up new guy thus Learns- NO going for the ladder and No Banana Period- without even knowing why! and also without ever being sprayed with water! These actions get repeated with 3 more times, with a new monkey each time and ASTONISHINGLY each new monkey- who had never received the cold-water Spray himself (and didn’t even know anything about it), would Join the beating up of the New guy. This is a classic example of Mob Mentality- bystanders and outsiders uninvolved with the fight- join in ‘just because’. When the researcher replaced a third monkey, the same thing happened; likewise for the fourth until, eventually, all the monkeys had been replaced and none of the original ones are left in the cage (that had been sprayed by water). The Experiment- Part 3 Again, a new monkey was introduced into the cage. It ran toward the ladder only to get beaten up by the others. The monkey turns with a curious face asking “why do you beat me up when I try to get the banana?” The other four monkeys stopped and looked at each other puzzled (None of them had been sprayed and so they really had no clue why the new guy can’t get the banana) but it didn’t matter, it was too late, the rules had been set. And So, although they didn’t know WHY, they beat up the monkey just because ” that’s the way we do things around here”… Well, it seems to be true; not in the exact shape that it took here, but close enough, Below is a quotation from the experiment, in scientific Jargon: (sources cited below) “Stephenson (1967) trained adult male and female rhesus monkeys to avoid manipulating an object and then placed individual naïve animals in a cage with a trained individual of the same age and sex and the object in question. In one case, a trained male actually pulled his naïve partner away from the previously punished manipulandum during their period of interaction, whereas the other two trained males exhibited what were described as “threat facial expressions while in a fear posture” when a naïve animal approached the manipulandum. When placed alone in the cage with the novel object, naïve males that had been paired with trained males showed greatly reduced manipulation of the training object in comparison with controls. Unfortunately, training and testing were not carried out using a discrimination procedure so the nature of the transmitted information cannot be determined, but the data are of considerable interest.” Sources: Stephenson, G. R. (1967). Cultural acquisition of a specific learned response among rhesus monkeys. In: Starek, D., Schneider, R., and Kuhn, H. J. (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, pp. 279-288. Mentioned in: Galef, B. G., Jr. (1976). Social Transmission of Acquired Behavior: A Discussion of Tradition and Social Learning in Vertebrates. In: Rosenblatt, J.S., Hinde, R.A., Shaw, E. and Beer, C. (eds.), Advances in the study of behavior, Vol. 6, New York: Academic Press, pp. 87-88:”

______________________________________________________

Schein, E. H. (2004). Organizational Culture and Leadership . San Francisco, Jossey Bass, pp. 26.

Animated monkey from http://www.animationfactory.com

13 thoughts on “ The Monkey Experiment and Edgar Schein ”

Carol, what a great illustration of how a “culture” gets built, for better or worse. As you have, I’ve seen it all too many times – the actions don’t match the words on the wall. Then leaders wonder ‘why aren’t people doing what we want them to do?’ It really is because they have literally learned not to. You recently used the word authenticity and I think that is what so much of it comes down to. Culture is all about what we do, not what we say. If we act inauthentically, it becomes like a parasitic vine, eventually weaving throughout the entire organization and hard to get rid of.

Thanks for your response, Peggy. I like the analogy of a parasitic vine….it grows fast and the host doesn’t even know it’s there!

With the new job, I’ve been thinking quite a bit about espoused values and the actual experience. I’m treated as a regular employee (and I will be one in June), but when it comes down to some cultural items, I’m absolutely a contractor and should stay quiet and out of the way.

Thanks for stopping by Erica. You know, the whole thing seems so simple, but the hidden and/or unspoken things can so quickly become habit.

Does the fact that Answers.com appears to be perpetuating a myth pose any difficulties for you? (Cf. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/what-monkeys-can-teach-us-about-human-behavior-facts-fiction )

Thanks for the correction, David. Your sarcasm is obvious, but I do appreciate the information.

David, I looked further, and it appears that this experiment may have been originated in “Competing for the Future” by Hamel and Prahalad. This link ( http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/6828/was-the-experiment-with-five-monkeys-a-ladder-a-banana-and-a-water-spray-condu )indicates an attempt to trace back the origins of the experiment without success.

Your point is a good one – to verify the sources of internet research. While it appears that this may have been urban legend perpetuated by “business writers,” the premise of learned culture is valid and has been researched by theoreticians in the world of business, such as Edgar Schein. The “follower” mentality that evolves from cultural norms is exhibited every day in the modern business world, making culture change extremely difficult.

Any chance you could provide some references for the research that has been conducted by theoreticians in the world of business as you note? I think “world of business” is key, not just freshmen Psy/Soc students or rhesus monkeys. Thanks.

I don’t have a copy of Hamel & Prahalad’s book, so I can’t look it up right now. Not sure what you are asking, but sometimes “research” and “world of business” are oxymorons. I did provide reference for Schein….

I commend you for a magnanimous & thoughtful response to a snarky comment, for which I must apologize. The Skeptics link you provided is as informative as any I’ve come across. At this point it would be helpful to view the 1967 paper from G. R. Stephenson to see more details of the original experiment. Because those details have not yet been brought to light, it seems apparent that subsequent authors have elaborated details to fit their rhetorical purposes.

There are many others transmitting this meme, I among them before I actually looked into it and discovered the lack of substantiation for it. I agree that the story is compelling & rings true; I think most of us have seen this type of behavior not only in corporate culture but in any social system maintained by fear. As a middle school teacher & erstwhile authority figure, I find abundant opportunities to question my decisions – was it the right thing to do, or was I simply playing the sixth monkey? – as I have questioned the use of sarcasm in commenting on your original blog entry.

The takeaway consideration for me is this: To what extent do I undermine my own credibility when using misinformation to support my argument? I think the answers go back to the author’s original intent and to the manner of the author’s response when confronted with more accurate information. Unlike some writers’ treatment of the anecdote, I feel that you have acquitted your position on both fronts.

Among the discrepancies between source and elaboration were air blasts instead of showers and novel objects instead of bananas. The experiment from Stephenson’s 1967 paper bears little resemblance to that described in the meme: http://www.scribd.com/doc/106891948/Stephenson-G-R-1967-Cultural-Acquisition-of-a-Specific-Learned-Response-Among-Rhesus-Monkeys-in-Starek-D-Schneider-R-And-Kuhn-H-J-Eds

Makes one wonder how many other authors try to dress their fiction up in the guise of science.

David, thanks for your recent comments. I also found the original Stephenson article, and skimmed it. One of my most fervid beliefs is that business practitioners of today are being bombarded with “research” and falling prey to trying this, and then that when this didn’t work. The confusion this presents to the workforce can literally tank an organization. I saw that with my own eyes.

Good lesson learned from all. Trust, but verify. With the wealth of information available in today’s internet, comes responsibility for verifying the content.

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The Story of The Five Monkeys. Is What We Believe Even True.

by David C. Lee | Oct 9, 2020 | Uncategorized | 6 comments

The Five Monkeys

Discussion Over Breakfast

Recently whist having breakfast with a colleague I was told a story about an experiment conducted some years ago. It involved 5 monkeys, a ladder, a bunch of bananas & cold water. I sat there intrigued. I am always fascinated by experiments that delve into what makes animals & humans tick.

The story goes that 5 monkeys were placed in a cage. In the middle of the cage was a ladder which led to a bunch of bananas suspended from the top of the cage.

When one of the monkeys went to the top of the ladder and grabbed a banana the scientists sprayed the remaining monkeys with freezing cold water. When the monkey that had grabbed the banana came back down the ladder the remaining 4 monkeys attacked him and beat him up. A couple of the other monkeys decided to go up the ladder but were greeted with the same response. After a while none of the monkeys ventured up the ladder no matter how much temptation there was.

Further Monkeys Bought Into Experiment

The scientists then substituted one of the monkeys with a new monkey and the first thing the new monkey did was climb the ladder and grabbed the banana. When the monkey climbed back down he too was greeted by 4 angry monkeys who beat him up. A second monkey was substituted and the first thing he did was climb the ladder and grab the banana. When he climbed back down he was greeted by 4 angry monkeys who beat him up including the first substituted monkey.

Each of the original monkeys was substituted with another monkey until there were 5 monkeys who had never been subjected to the freezing cold shower. If we could interview each of the last group of monkeys about why they attacked any monkey that went up the ladder the answer would probably be, “I don’t know, it’s how things are done around here”. The experiment was to show that animals and presumably people just follow the herd.

Wanting To Know More About It

I decided that whilst this story sounded good, I wanted to know more about how the experiment was conducted. I found many mentions of the experiment in numerous self development books. I searched scientific journals but to no avail, google scholar couldn’t help. I searched YouTube and found several videos pertaining to the experiment. I didn’t find any scientific reference to the experiment but found many that questioned the validity of it.

When Is The Truth Not The Truth.

In essence, it seems that a relatively famous “experiment” has been taken as truth by speakers, authors and coaches and spread around the world. It has been quoted in books, presentations and is easily searched on YouTube.

I thought how many of these “facts” are hidden inside our heads as truths. If something like the 5 Monkeys Experiment can be quoted and used by numerous people as fact and spread as truth for all to believe without question, then what about the “facts” we were told whilst growing up. You are not smart enough, you come from an ordinary family, you will never go to university, money is the root of all evil, be happy with your lot etc etc. These “facts” can be cultural, religious, socio economic or come from friends and family.

Many of these facts are so deeply rooted in our minds that we are not even consciously aware of them. Because we are not aware of them we don’t know or gauge how they affect our behaviors.

Our Mind In Survival Mode

Our mind is always in survival mode and wants to protect us from harm. In earlier times this was extremely useful when we were out hunting wild animals for lunch. If we didn’t have the survival mechanism then we may have actually ended up as lunch. Now, we don’t have to hunt wild animals for survival, but we still have this survival mechanism. Unfortunately, this same mechanism keeps up limited or safe. We don’t strive for betterment, we don’t want to put ourselves out there because we don’t want our friends or family to say, “told you so” or “what, you couldn’t run your own business”.

Our “facts” keep us in a life of mediocrity, if we don’t try, we don’t have to face the fact that we may fail. These “facts” are so strong, and they keep us down. If your don’t do something about them then they will keep you down for your whole life. You will live a life far less than what you are capable of.

It All Takes Work

All people who have achieved anything worthwhile in their life have gone to work, they have gone to work on themselves. They have worked tirelessly to rid their mind of the “facts” that have poisoned them for years. They have worked on themselves and their mindset so they can live the life of their dreams. They have proven that the “facts” in their minds are just wrong, much like people quoting the 5 Monkeys Experiment as being fact.

When we come up against challenges in our life our mind kicks in and says, “This is going to make you feel uncomfortable, this is going to take some effort, people might say or think bad things about you, when you fail people will laugh at you, you will look stupid”. That is when you either step up or take a seat. By taking a seat you will be forever caught up in the circle of mediocrity and think “what if”. If you step up, then you will gain confidence and be able to tackle bigger and better challenges in life. You just have to decide. You will need to keep disciplined as discipline will last much longer than motivation alone.

Living Life On Your Own Terms

Each and every person that is living life on their own terms practices keeping their mindset healthy. Everyone has skeletons in the closet, past challenges to deal with, trauma, no one has had a perfect life. Do not believe everything you think. Yes, you did read that right, do not believe everything you think. Our mind is constantly trying to protect us but be doing so keeps us small. That is the reason that coaches have coaches and mentors have mentors, they constantly challenge the “facts” that are in their minds.

Make the decision to live life on your terms, make that decision today. A decision is made in an instant, but it is the leadup to that decision that can take decades. A coach will help you break the “facts” that keep you from achieving the life you deserve and will be there every step of the way on your journey.

I want to leave you with one of my favorite quotes by Marianne Williamson,

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous”? Actually, who are you not to be?

Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine, as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others”.

Marianne Williamson

Great Blog David and questioning is even more important now with what has been happening across the world

Yes Carl it is. To grow you have to keep questioning why and what is happening in the world.

There is heaps of stuff out there that is not true. People make rash judgments without knowing all the details.

Hi Barry, Yes they do. You have to see the whole picture and then still be open as there is always new information coming out about everything.

That Marianne Williamson passage is one of my favorites too, so inspiring.

Yes it is Rachel, it is so good.

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This brief excerpt on Kohler's research is from the book: The Animal Mind by J.L Gould & C. G. Gould Wolfgang Kohler, a psychologist trained at the University of Berlin, was working at a primate research facility maintained by the Prussian Academy of Sciences in the Canary Islands when the First World War broke out. Marooned there, he had at his disposal a large outdoor pen and nine chimpanzees of various ages. The pen, described by Kohler as a playground, was provided with a variety of objects including boxes, poles, and sticks, with which the primates could experiment. Kohler constructed a variety of problems for the chimps, each of which involved obtaining food that was not directly accessible. In the simplest task, food was put on the other side of a barrier. Dogs and cats in previous experiments had faced the barrier in order to reach the food, rather than moving away from the goal to circumvent the barrier. The chimps, however, presented with an apparently analogous situation, set off immediately on the circuitous route to the food. It is important to note that the dogs and cats that had apparently failed this test were not necessarily less intelligent than the chimps. The earlier experiments that psychologists had run on dogs and cats differed from Kohler's experiments on chimps in two important ways. First, the barriers were not familiar to the dogs and cats, and thus there was no opportunity for using latent learning, whereas the chimps were well acquainted with the rooms used in Kohler's tests. Second, whereas the food remained visible in the dog and cat experiments, in the chimp test the food was tossed out the window (after which the window was shut) and fell out of sight. Indeed, when Kohler tried the same test on a dog familiar with the room, the animal (after proving to itself that the window was shut), took the shortest of the possible indirect routes to the unseen food. The ability to select an indirect (or even novel) route to a goal is not restricted to chimps, cats, and dogs. At least some insects routinely perform similar feats. The cognitive processing underlying these abilities will become clearer when we look at navigation by chimps in a later chapter. For now, the point is that the chimpanzees' abilities to plan routes are not as unique as they appeared at the time. Some of the other tests that Kohler is known for are preserved on film. In a typical sequence, a chimp jumps fruitlessly at bananas that have been hung out of reach. Usually, after a period of unsuccessful jumping, the chimp apparently becomes angry or frustrated, walks away in seeming disgust, pauses, then looks at the food in what might be a more reflective way, then at the toys in the enclosure, then back at the food, and then at the toys again. Finally the animal begins to use the toys to get at the food. The details of the chimps' solutions to Kohler's food-gathering puzzle varied. One chimp tried to shinny up a toppling pole it had poised under the bananas; several succeeded by stacking crates underneath, but were hampered by difficulties in getting their centers of gravity right. Another chimp had good luck moving a crate under the bananas and using a pole to knock them down. The theme common to each of these attempts is that, to all appearances, the chimps were solving the problem by a kind of cognitive trial and error, as if they were experimenting in their minds before manipulating the tools. The pattern of these behaviors--failure, pause, looking at the potential tools, and then the attempt--would seem to involve insight and planning, at least on the first occasion. Photos and captions from The Mentality of Apes click on each image to see larger version Chica on the jumping stick Grande on an insecure construction Sulton making a double-stick Konsul, Grande, Sultona and Chica building Grande achieves a four-story structure Read Kohler's Introduction to the Mentality of Apes Kohler's objections to Thorndike's approach to Animal Intelligence Questions about Kohler's conclusions: by P. Schiller's later work looking at the same issue Kenneth Spence's take on this general issue by R. Epstein's work on "insight" in pigeons Back to Main History Page

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Prolog - Monkey and Banana Problem

In this prolog example, we will see one very interesting and famous problem, The Monkey and Banana Problem.

Problem Statement

Suppose the problem is as given below −

A hungry monkey is in a room, and he is near the door.

The monkey is on the floor.

Bananas have been hung from the center of the ceiling of the room.

There is a block (or chair) present in the room near the window.

The monkey wants the banana, but cannot reach it.

So how can the monkey get the bananas?

So if the monkey is clever enough, he can come to the block, drag the block to the center, climb on it, and get the banana. Below are few observations in this case −

Monkey can reach the block, if both of them are at the same level. From the above image, we can see that both the monkey and the block are on the floor.

If the block position is not at the center, then monkey can drag it to the center.

If monkey and the block both are on the floor, and block is at the center, then the monkey can climb up on the block. So the vertical position of the monkey will be changed.

When the monkey is on the block, and block is at the center, then the monkey can get the bananas.

Now, let us see how we can solve this using Prolog. We will create some predicates as follows −

We have some predicates that will move from one state to another state, by performing action.

When the block is at the middle, and monkey is on top of the block, and monkey does not have the banana (i.e. has not state), then using the grasp action, it will change from has not state to have state.

From the floor, it can move to the top of the block (i.e. on top state), by performing the action climb .

The push or drag operation moves the block from one place to another.

Monkey can move from one place to another using walk or move clauses.

Another predicate will be canget(). Here we pass a state, so this will perform move predicate from one state to another using different actions, then perform canget() on state 2. When we have reached to the state ‘ has> ’, this indicates ‘ has banana ’. We will stop the execution.

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Published: 19 July 2023

Monkeys who experience more feeding competition utilize social information to learn foraging skills faster

T. Jean M. Arseneau-Robar 1 , 2 , 3 na1 ,
Karyn A. Anderson 1 , 2 na1 ,
Pascale Sicotte 3 &
Julie A. Teichroeb 1 , 2

Scientific Reports volume 13 , Article number: 11624 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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Behavioural ecology
Feeding behaviour
Learning and memory
Social behaviour

Animals must learn foraging skills to successfully survive and reproduce but the sources of interindividual variation in learning are poorly understood. For example, there is little consensus on the role motivation plays, even though it is a key factor impacting learning outcomes in humans. Here, we conduct a field experiment on a wild primate to investigate whether an individual’s vulnerability to feeding competition impacts their motivation to learn a beneficial foraging technique. We provided a group of monkeys with a food reward (i.e., a half banana) that needed to be retrieved from a box. The monkeys discovered an efficient technique that consistently allowed them to retrieve the banana quickly, decreasing the risk of food loss to competitors. We found that individuals who frequently experienced feeding competition learned this efficient technique significantly faster than individuals who rarely foraged in the presence of a dominant competitor. They appeared to use social learning to learn faster as they were more attentive to the handling techniques others used and improved their foraging skills after opportunities to observe a skilled demonstrator. These findings support that an individual’s vulnerability to feeding competition impacts their motivation to learn foraging skills that reduce food loss to competitors.

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Introduction.

To survive, animals must overcome a multitude of ecological and social challenges. Individuals may need to learn to forage optimally, find or construct shelter, avoid predation, attract mates, form enduring social bonds, and outcompete conspecifics 1 , 2 , 3 . The need to acquire such a diverse skillset is thought to create selective pressure for the evolution of long juvenile periods, and this trait is exaggerated in many social species like primates, elephants and cetaceans, where around a fifth of the lifespan is spent in childhood 1 , 2 . While many skills can be learned individually, doing so is often risky and costly, as individuals may need to explore their environment, innovate new solutions, and improve their skills through practice. Conversely, individuals can learn from observing or interacting with others (referred to as social learning) and acquire information from knowledgeable conspecifics 4 . As a result, social learning typically allows individuals to learn faster 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 and achieve a higher level of competency 9 , 10 .

The past three decades have generated a wealth of knowledge on learning in non-human animals, with researchers increasingly working on wild populations. By studying animals in natural settings, where they are subject to the extensive array of selective pressures that have shaped their evolutionary trajectory, we have broadened our knowledge on the skills animals learn, and who they learn from 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 . However, we understand comparatively little about the sources of variation in learning success and efficiency among individuals. Inter- and intraindividual variation in learning may arise from differences in personality, aptitude, or an individual’s motivation to learn 21 . Given that motivation is recognized as a key factor influencing learning outcomes in humans 22 , 23 , greater attention to its impact in other species is warranted. Motivation is an internal process that energizes, directs, and sustains behaviour. Whether consciously or unconsciously, individuals weigh the perceived value (i.e., utility) gained from completing a task against the effort required to do so 22 , 23 . Thus, individuals should be motivated to learn a new skill if they perceive the benefits to outweigh the opportunity costs and cognitive effort of learning. Importantly, because it is a psychological construct, motivation cannot be observed directly. Instead, it must be inferred by measuring an individual’s cognitive, affective, behavioural or physiological responses, or by asking test subjects how motivated they felt to learn 24 . Given that many of these measures cannot be obtained in wild animals, who lack our advanced language capabilities, task performance metrics (e.g., speed, success or persistence) are often the best measures we have to infer motivation 25 , 26 , 27 .

How motivated individuals are to learn a new foraging skill may depend on their (a) current competency, (b) hunger level, (c) the impact that food resources have on their fitness, or (d) their competitive ability. For example, it is thought that juveniles may be motivated to learn foraging skills because of their asymmetry in knowledge compared to adults 28 , 29 . Those who are hungry, in poor condition or experiencing food scarcity are expected to value skills that increase food access more than those who are not 30 , 31 . It has been posited that females may be more motivated to acquire foraging skills than males because their high levels of investment in offspring means that female fitness is typically limited by access to food resources 32 , 33 . Lastly, individuals who are small, have poor fighting skills, or have a low dominance rank may be more motivated to learn new foraging skills than individuals who are able to win access to valuable food resources via contest competition 34 , 35 , 36 .

While many studies have attempted to test whether poor competitive ability motivates individuals to learn new foraging skills, there is little consensus in the literature on whether ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ 34 , 35 , 36 . In some cases, individuals who are thought to be at a competitive disadvantage can be more likely to innovate a new foraging skill, more persistent in their attempts to innovate, or solve a foraging problem faster 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 . However, numerous studies have failed to find a correlation between age, size or dominance rank and innovation persistence, speed or success 45 , 46 , 47 , 48 , 49 . Some authors have suggested that individuals who are motivated to learn may refrain from innovating because they want to avoid conflict with high-ranking audience members or are sensitive to the risk of theft 50 , 51 , 52 . Others have concluded that high-ranking individuals have a greater capacity to innovate 35 , 48 . However, it is also likely that in many cases, the rough proxies that are used to measure individual variation in the perceived utility of learning the foraging skill, do not accurately reflect how motivated individuals felt in the current conditions. The inappropriateness of rough proxies for motivation has also been suggested by Thornton and Samson 44 as there is a similar lack of consensus on the impact that hunger state has on the propensity to innovate 35 , 51 . These conflicting results make it difficult to draw any firm conclusions on the role that motivation plays in driving learning in non-human animals, or the factors that determine how motivated individuals feel to learn.

The aim of this study was to investigate whether competitive ability impacts an individual’s motivation to learn a more-efficient solution to a foraging problem. We conducted a field experiment on a wild group of vervet monkeys ( Chlorocebus pygerythrus ), a species which forms linear dominance hierarchies 53 that affect their ability to monopolize food resources 54 , 55 , 56 . We presented the monkeys with a valuable food reward (i.e., a half banana), which needed to be retrieved from a clear plastic box with a hole on one side of the opaque lid (Fig. 1 a). We did not train a demonstrator, but rather allowed the monkeys to innovate their own solutions. The monkeys initially developed handling techniques that focused on manipulating the box until the banana fell out, or was near the hole and could be grabbed by inserting only their hand into the box (ESM videos 1 , 2 ). Subsequently, however, they invented an alternative technique in which they refrained from handling the box, and instead reached into the far end, grabbed the banana, and pulled it out. This “no-manipulation reach-in” technique (Fig. 1 b; ESM videos 3 , 4 ) was more efficient as handlers did not spend time rolling, tipping, or shaking the box (ESM Fig. 1 ). While much of the experimental work on learning in wild animals investigates the learning of new skills (by presenting them with a novel apparatus to solve), our investigation into the role motivation plays in improving a skill is biologically relevant as many of the skills that animals learn in the wild are improvements or refinements to existing techniques. For example, moss sponging in chimpanzees ( Pan troglodytes ) is a more efficient drinking technique than leaf sponging 57 , and the hooked tools built by New Caledonian crows ( Corvus moneduloides ) are more effective when extractive foraging than unmodified tools 58 . In the experiment we conduct here, learning the no-manipulation reach-in was beneficial because being able to reliably retrieve the banana within a few seconds allowed individuals to obtain the highly-valued food reward (i.e. the banana) before dominant audience members could arrive at the experiment and displace them 55 .

( a ) The food box in which the half-banana was placed, and ( b ) a vervet monkey retrieving the food reward using the no-manipulation reach-in technique. With this technique, they refrained from handling the box (i.e., left it sitting on the table) and instead inserted their whole arm in so they could grab the half-banana at the far end, and pull it out.

In line with the ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ hypothesis 34 , 35 , 36 , we expected that individuals who experienced more feeding competition would be more likely to learn the no-manipulation reach-in technique and learn it faster. However, instead of using rough proxies of individual competitive ability (e.g., age, size or rank), we explored how individual group members experienced feeding competition when trying to access the food resources provided in this experiment. We did this because, while their propensity to form linear dominance hierarchies means that rank is likely a key factor impacting the amount of feeding competition individuals experience, other factors likely influence motivation as well. For example, it is possible that individuals who are frequently tolerated by dominants around food resources, are willing forage away from the safety of the group where contest competition is less likely to arise (i.e., be a producer), or are skilled at sneaking or stealing food from competitors 54 , 55 , 56 may feel less motivated to learn as they can access food resources through alternative strategies. This approach allowed us to choose a more precise measure of individual vulnerability to contest competition, which we expected would index motivation to learn this particular foraging skill (i.e., the no-manipulation reach-in technique) more accurately than dominance rank.

We also hypothesized that individuals who were highly motivated to learn efficient foraging techniques would rely on social learning to gain competency quickly, because it has been demonstrated in other studies to be a more rapid learning mode than individual (i.e., trial-and-error) learning 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 . Therefore, we expected that individuals who experienced high levels of feeding competition would both seek out social information (i.e., attend to the handling techniques of others), and improve their skills after having opportunities to learn socially. Conversely, we predicted that individuals who experience little contest competition would be more likely to ignore social information. Notably, this lack of investment in social learning by high-ranking individuals has been observed in chimpanzees 59 .

This research was conducted from January to April 2019, at a field site near Lake Nabugabo, Uganda (0°22′–12° S, 31°54′ E). Study subjects were the members of one habituated group of wild vervet monkeys ( Chlorocebus pygerythrus ), which contained 4 to 7 adult males at any given time, 10 adult females, 3 subadult males (i.e., ≥ 3 years old and still residing in their natal group), 5 subadult females (≥ 3 years old and nulliparous), and 16–19 juveniles (≤ 2 years old). However, juveniles were rarely able to gain access to the food box and so were not considered in this study.

We conducted a foraging experiment that involved providing the monkeys with access to a multi-destination array comprised of five platforms, one of which was baited with a valuable food reward (i.e., a half banana) that needed to be retrieved from a food box. The experimental methodology was approved by the Uganda Wildlife Authority, the Uganda National Council for Science and Technology, and the University of Toronto Animal Care Committee. The methods were carried out in accordance with these protocols and the ARRIVE guidelines. We had two goals with this experiment; the first was to examine how the risk of feeding competition impacted foraging decisions 55 , and the second was to investigate interindividual variation in learning (this study). In each experimental trial, an observer baited the platforms, recorded the identity of the monkeys who obtained food rewards, the composition of the audience (within 100 m) and their distance from the experiment, and any social interactions that were observed. The observer also video recorded each trial so that the techniques that were used to retrieve the banana from the food box could be coded in detail, and the time spent handling measured. We did not restrict access to the food box, meaning each group member could obtain the food reward if they could handle the box without being displaced by a competitor, and successfully retrieve the banana. This task was relatively easy as all group members quickly learned to get the banana out, however, there was a lot of variation in handling times. The most efficient handling technique the monkeys innovated did not actually involve manipulating the box. Instead, the handing individual inserted their arm up to the elbow so they could reach the banana at the far end, grab it, and pull it out (i.e., no-manipulation reach-in; ESM videos 3 , 4 ). This technique may have been relatively difficult to learn as it required the monkeys to retrieve the banana without coordinating this action visually (i.e., they could not see the banana through the opaque lid), and they had to inhibit the urge to pick the box up.

We also used the video recordings to opportunistically quantify how frequently group members attended to the handling techniques of others when present in the audience. Audience members were visible in the background of 276 trials. In each of these, we coded whether the audience member’s face was oriented towards the handling individual for at least one second while they handled the food box. We used a one-second cut-off because subordinate competitors often glanced at the handler briefly before/as they moved to feed at another platform, seemingly to check that the dominant competitor was still busy with the food box and/or ensure the dominant was going to tolerate them eating the food on another platform (ESM videos 7 , 8 ). Conversely, when sitting and watching the handling individual, audience members typically looked at the handler for more than a second at a time (ESM videos 5 , 6 ). This sustained attention was more likely to allow them to observe the action sequence being used by the handler, and so could provide information on the handling technique being employed. We censored out any trials in which the audience member was attempting to displace the handler, or was aggressing them, as it seemed unlikely they were focused on the handling techniques in these cases. We quantified the opportunities each individual had to learn socially by calculating the number of times they had been in the audience (i.e., within 50 m) when a group member demonstrated the no-manipulation reach-in technique, and deemed that they had recently had a social-learning opportunity if this had occurred no more than 30 min prior to them handling the box themselves. We chose 30 min because monkeys who were waiting for a chance to participate in the experiment often sat nearby (i.e., were present in the audience), but did not stay for longer than 30 min. Therefore, the observed latencies between observing the handling techniques of others and handling the food box oneself was typically less than 30 min, or one or more days later.

Each group member’s dominance rank was calculated using Elo-ratings 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , using data on aggressive interactions and displacements collected around the experiment, as well as during ongoing behavioural data collection 55 (N = 3221). Although females can out-rank males in this species 54 , 64 , 65 , all the adult males out-ranked all adult and subadult females during this study. Subadult males were subordinate to adult males but were interspersed within the female dominance hierarchy (ESM Table 1 ). Elo-ratings were calculated using the ‘EloRating’ package 61 in which the known ordinal ranks at the onset of the experiment were input as “startvalues”, and the default settings were used for “k” (i.e., 100) and “normprob” (i.e., normal distribution). We used the average Elo-rating across the study period as our measure of individual dominance rank, but for each experimental trial, we used the daily Elo-ratings to score whether the individual handling the food box was in competition with a dominant or subordinate group member. Unlike ordinal ranks, higher Elo-rating values indicate that an individual was high-ranking, while low or negative Elo-rating values indicate lower dominance rank.

We calculated several other metrics (i.e., in addition to dominance rank) to explore each individual’s vulnerability to feeding competition to further investigate how useful dominance rank is as an index of competition experienced. Individual monkeys typically visited the experiment when travelling with the group, but some also came alone (i.e., there were no group members within 100 m/in-sight). For the former, we calculated how often each individual had a dominant competitor present when foraging with the group. We focused on dominant competitors because the monopolizability of the food box, handling time required to retrieve the banana, and linear dominance hierarchies seen in vervet monkeys, collectively meant that subordinate audience members had very little capacity to aggress a dominant or successfully steal the banana. Thus, subordinate audience members imposed few costs on dominants in this context. We also calculated how frequently each individual was displaced or aggressed when trying to access experimentally provided food resources as a more direct measure of contest competition experienced. To quantify each individual’s propensity to forage alone (i.e., escape contest competition) we calculated the number of trials each individual completed with no group members in sight. Lastly, we calculated the proportion of all trials participated in where a dominant competitor was present. This was the metric we used to index feeding competition experienced when running the rest of the analyses as this measure reflected the amount of contest competition individuals experienced when group-foraging (which was largely dependent on their dominance rank), as well as their willingness to forage away from the safety of the group to escape feeding competition.

Statistical analyses

All data supporting this manuscript are included in the Electronic Supplementary Materials. We first explored how individuals experienced feeding competition when participating in this experiment. Because the data did not meet the assumptions of normality, we used Kendall’s rank correlations to investigate the relationship between dominance rank and (1) the proportion group-foraging trials in which the individual handling the food box was in competition with a dominant competitor, (2) the proportion of group-foraging trials in which they were aggressed/displaced by a dominant competitor, and (3) the number of trials in which they foraged solitarily with no group members in sight. We also used a Kruskal–Wallis test, with a Holm-Bonferroni adjustment for multiple comparisons 66 , to examine differences in behaviour among the age-sex classes.

We used four models to assess how the amount of feeding competition experienced (i.e., the proportion of all experimental trials that each individual had a dominant competitor present) impacted the speed with which individuals gained proficient handling skills. The four benchmarks we considered were the number of handling events each individual took to (1) reach deeply into the food box (rather than manipulate the box until the banana was easy to grab)(model 1, Table 1 ), (2) attempt a no-manipulation reach-in (i.e., inhibit the urge to manipulate the food box)(model 2, Table 1 ), (3) succeed in a no-manipulation reach-in for the first time (model 3, Table 1 ), and (4) achieve their personal fastest handling time (model 4, Table 1 ). Because the response variable in all these models were counts, and all models suffered from over-dispersion (assessed using the 'DHARMa' package, version 0.3.3.0) 67 , we used negative binomial generalized linear models (GLMs) 68 , which effectively mitigated this issue. We also scaled predictor variables, using the ‘scale()’ function in R, to improve model performance. We repeated this process using average rank as the predictor variable in these four, negative binomial GLMs (models 4 to 8, Table 1 ), and used AIC to compare how well dominance rank (i.e., a rough proxy for competitive ability) and the proportion of trials with a dominant competitor present (i.e., a more precise measure of competition experienced in this foraging task) each explained variation in learning.

To understand how some individuals learned faster than others, we examined (1) the conditions in which audience members were attentive to the handling techniques other’s used, and (2) the learning experiences individuals had before they successfully executed the no-manipulation reach-in technique. Using a generalized linear mixed model (GLMM) to control for repeated observations of individuals 69 , 70 , we tested whether the amount of feeding competition experienced (i.e., the proportion of trials with a dominant competitor) and the audience members own skill level (i.e., whether they had learned the no-manipulation reach-in technique yet) impacted the propensity to attend to the handling techniques of others (model 9, Table 1 ). Similarly, we used a GLMM to examine age-sex differences in attention (i.e., whether they attended to the handling techniques used by the focal when in the audience), by including age-sex class as the predictor variable and setting adult males to the reference category that the other age-sex classes were compared to (model 10, Table 1 ).

To investigate how learning experiences impacted learning success, we examined all handling events that each individual obtained before successfully executing the no-manipulation reach-in technique. Here, we lacked the sample size to test for an interaction between the amount of feeding competition experienced, and whether the individual had had a recent opportunity to observe the no-manipulation reach-in technique. So, we instead created two GLMMs, one in which the focal monkey was an adult male and one in which they were one of the other age-sex classes (models 11 and 12, Table 1 ). While we advocate against using rough proxies for competitive ability, we begin our analyses by investigating how individuals experience feeding competition. This highlighted that adult males were rarely at risk of losing the valued food reward to a dominant competitor if they failed to extract it from the box quickly enough. Consequently, adult males experienced feeding competition very differently from the other age-sex classes (e.g., Fig. 2 ). In each of these two GLMMs we tested whether individuals were more likely to attempt, or successfully execute the no-manipulation reach-in technique if they had recently observed a group member demonstrate it (models 11 and 12, Table 1 ). If individuals are using social learning, we would expect them to be most likely to try/use the no-manipulation reach-in after observing another monkey demonstrate it (i.e., see-it, do-it) 13 , 17 , 71 . We were also wary of the possibility that adult males lacked opportunities to learn socially because they were able to monopolize the food box for long periods. Therefore, we examined a subset of data in which individuals had had the opportunity to learn from a skilled demonstrator, as well as the opportunity to handle the food box in the near future (i.e., within 30 min). Using these data, we built a GLMM to test whether adult males were less likely than the other age-sex classes to try or successfully execute the no-manipulation reach-in themselves if they had had a recent social learning opportunity (model 13, Table 1 ).

The relationship between dominance rank (i.e., average Elo-rating throughout the study period) and the proportion of competitive trials in which individuals ( a ) were the subordinate of the two competitors, and ( b ) were aggressed or displaced when they attempted to access food resources. Higher Elo-ratings indicate higher dominance rank, whereas low or negative values indicate a low dominance rank.

Lastly, we used a Kendall’s rank correlation, as well as a Wilcoxon rank-sum test, to investigate the role that individual learning played acquiring proficiency. Here, we tested how the amount of feeding competition experienced (model 14, Table 1 ), and whether an individual was an adult male or not (model 15, Table 1 ), related to the cumulative handling time needed to successfully execute the no-manipulation reach-in technique. All statistical analyses were conducted in R (version 3.6) 72 . Negative binomial GLMs were implemented using the ‘MASS’ package (version 7.3–51.4) 73 and GLMMs were built using the ‘lme4’ package 70 . We used the 'DHARMa' package (version 0.3.3.0) 67 to ensure models did not suffer from overdispersion. We used the likelihood ratio test to assess the significance of predictor variables in each model 66 , 69 , and when predictor variables had more than two factor levels we used p-values estimated using the Wald test to assess the significance of each dummy variable. For example, when using GLMMs to compare the behaviour of age-sex classes, we set adult males to the reference category and compared the other age-sex classes to them. We examined model fit in the GLMMs by comparing the full model (model with all fixed effects included) to the null model (model with random effects only) using likelihood ratio tests and using residual diagnostics. All GLMM models with significant fixed effects performed significantly better than the null model (all χ 2 ≥ 3.98, all p < 0.040).

In total, we observed the handling techniques the monkeys used to retrieve the banana from the food box in 1648 trials. Every adult and subadult in the group was able to handle the box at least once, but the number of handling opportunities that each study participant obtained varied from 1 to 264. The amount of time it took the monkeys to retrieve the banana from the food box also varied considerably, with the fastest handling time observed being 1 s and the longest being 69 s (x̄ = 6.7 s). All group members improved their skill level with experience (ESM Fig. 2 ), as we observed significant improvements in handling time between each individual’s first handling event and their personal best (Binomial test: N = 24 monkeys had more than one handling opportunity, mu = 0, p < 0.001). The majority of monkeys also learned to retrieve the banana from the food box using the no-manipulation reach-in technique. Of the 27 study participants, only one subadult female, who was the lowest ranking participant in the experiment, failed to learn it. Given that she was only able to handle the box once, she likely did not obtain sufficient opportunities to learn. We observed significant variation in the speed with which individuals learned, with individuals needing anywhere from one to 44 handling opportunities to successfully execute the no-manipulation reach-in technique.

Instead of assuming there was a strong link between dominance rank and competitive ability, we explored how individuals experienced feeding competition to infer their motivation to learn the no-manipulation reach-in technique. As would be expected, we found that when they were foraging with the group, low-ranking individuals were significantly more likely to have a dominant competitor present at the experiment than their high-ranking group mates (Fig. 2 a). Consequently, low-ranking individuals were also more likely to experience contest competition as they were more likely to be aggressed or displaced by a competitor (Fig. 2 b). Notably, adult males out-ranked all other group members during this study (ESM Table 1 ), and almost never co-fed at the platforms with another adult male. As a result, they were rarely in competition with a dominant competitor, aggressed or displaced from the experiment platforms (Fig. 2 a,b).

Importantly, individuals could also avoid contest competition by leaving their group and visiting the experiment site alone. We found that high-ranking individuals displayed a significantly greater propensity to forage solitarily (Fig. 3 a), however, this rank effect was likely also impacted by sex differences in willingness to leave the safety of the group, as both adult and subadult males showed a greater tendency to forage solitarily than adult females (Fig. 3 b). They also stayed away from the group for longer. While subadult and adult males were observed to remain, alone, at the experiment site for up to 30 min, adult females never stayed alone for more than 4 min.

Propensity for individuals to leave the group and visit the experiment site in solitude (i.e., no group members were within 100 m) relative to their ( a ) dominance rank and ( b ) age-sex class. Higher Elo-ratings indicate higher dominance rank, whereas low or negative values indicate a low dominance rank.

To ensure our measure of competitive ability reflected both the levels of feeding competition arising from an individual’s position in the dominance hierarchy, and their ability to escape competition by foraging solitarily, we calculated the proportion of all foraging trials participated in that individuals had a dominant competitor present. We then assessed how competition experienced impacted learning efficiency using four milestones. We found that individuals who frequently foraged in the presence of a dominant competitor, learned the no-manipulation reach-in technique significantly faster than those who did not. They took fewer trials to start reaching deeply into the food box (i.e., reach-in up to their elbow) (Model 1, GLM: N = 26, β = −1.25, SE = 0.55, χ 2 = 5.11, p = 0.024), to attempt the no-manipulation reach-in (i.e., inhibit the urge to manipulate the food box) (Model 2, GLM: N = 26, β = −2.40, SE = 0.65, χ 2 = 14.24, p < 0.001), to successfully execute this technique (Model 3, GLM: N = 26, β = −2.68, SE = 0.62, χ 2 = 20.28, p < 0.001), and to achieve their personal fastest handling time (Model 4, GLM: N = 26, β = −2.19, SE = 0.65, χ 2 = 11.72, p < 0.001). Notably, the proportion of trials with a dominant competitor present explained more of the variation in individual learning speed than dominance rank did (Table 2 , all delta AICc values > 2). While this rough proxy for competitive ability did a good job of explaining variation in learning speed according to some milestones (Model 6, GLM, attempting the no-manipulation reach-in: N = 26, β = 0.43, SE = 0.20, χ 2 = 4.38, p = 0.036; Model 7, GLM: executing it successfully: N = 26, β = 0.51, SE = 0.20, χ 2 = 6.65, p = 0.010), it did a poor job of explaining how long it took individuals to start reaching deeply into food box (Model 6, GLM: N = 26, β = 0.20, SE = 0.16, χ 2 = 1.57, p = 0.211), or to achieve their personal fastest handling time (Model 8, GLM: N = 26, β = 0.31, SE = 0.21, χ 2 = 3.29, p = 0.069).

To understand how some individuals learned faster than others, we examined patterns of attention and the learning experiences individuals had before they successfully executed the no-manipulation reach-in technique. We found that individuals who were not yet skilled handlers (i.e., had not yet learned the no-manipulation reach-in technique) were significantly more likely to attend to the handling techniques of others (Model 9, GLMM: N = 276, β = −1.36, SE = 0.41, χ 2 = 11.47, p < 0.001), as were individuals who were frequently in competition with dominant competitors (Model 9, GLMM: N = 276, β = 2.39, SE = 0.85, χ 2 = 6.60, p = 0.010). In particular, the highest-ranking group members, adult males, rarely paid attention to the handling techniques used by others (attentive in 6% of cases). As a result, they were significantly less attentive than adult females (Model 10, GLMM: N = 276, β = 1.87, SE = 0.66, z = 2.83, p = 0.005), subadult females (Model 10, GLMM: N = 276, β = 1.68, SE = 0.74, z = 2.27, p = 0.023) and subadult males (Model 10, GLMM: N = 276, β = 1.62, SE = 0.81, z = 1.99, p = 0.046), who watched others handle the food box in approximately 25% of the trials in which they were in the audience.

The learning experiences individuals had before they learned the most efficient foraging technique showed that the age-sex classes that were most vulnerable to feeding competition (i.e., adult females, subadult females and subadult males) were more likely to attempt, or successfully execute, the no-manipulation reach-in technique if they had recently had the opportunity to learn socially. That is to say, they were more likely to show improvements in their handling technique if they had seen a group member demonstrate the no-manipulation reach-in technique within the past 30 min (Model 12, GLMM: N = 55, β = 1.12, SE = 0.57, χ 2 = 3.98, p = 0.046). Conversely, for adult males, improvements in handling technique were not dependent on the occurrence of recent social learning opportunities (Model 11, GLMM: N = 87, β = 0.43, SE = 0.85, χ 2 = 0.24, p = 0.625). However, this may have been because they rarely obtained opportunities to observe others. To control for differences in opportunity, we examined only the trials in which the individual handling the food box had recently observed a group member demonstrate the no-manipulation reach-in technique. Adult males were significantly less likely to attempt to copy the technique in their next handling event than the other age-sex classes (Model 13, GLMM: N = 43, β = −1.69, SE = 0.75, χ 2 = 4.70, p = 0.024). Thus, high-ranking adult males ignored valuable social information when it was available. Furthermore, adult males tended to have higher cumulative handling times than the other age-sex classes by the time they successfully executed the no-manipulation reach-in technique (Model 15, Wilcoxon rank-sum test: N = 26, W = 103.5, p = 0.084). The same pattern was observed when looking at how competition experienced impacted the cumulative handling time to learn the no-manipulation reach-in technique as those who rarely had dominant competitors present needed more experience with the food box to learn (Model 14, Kendall’s Rank Correlation: N = 26, tau = −0.34, z = −2.38, p = 0.017). These findings suggest that adult males, and other high-ranking individuals may be more likely to learn through trial-and-error. Note that their lack of interest was not because they had already learned an alternative handling technique that worked reasonably well, as adult males frequently needed long handling times to retrieve the banana until they learned the no-manipulation reach-in technique (ESM Fig. 3 ).

The aim of this study was to investigate whether competitive ability impacts motivation to learn a foraging skill that can improve access to valuable food resources. Although almost all study participants successfully learned the most efficient technique for retrieving a food reward from a box (i.e., the no-manipulation reach-in), individuals who experienced high levels of feeding competition (i.e., frequently foraged in the presence of a dominant competitor) learned this technique significantly faster. They required fewer handling opportunities to both attempt and succeed in executing the no-manipulation reach-in technique, and to achieve their personal fastest handling time. These findings suggest that it was individuals who often had to worry about dominants displacing them from food patches that were most motivated to learn a skill that mitigated the costs of contest competition. Our findings further suggest that they used social learning to gain proficiency quickly. The age-sex classes that experienced the most contest competition (i.e., were most likely to be aggressed or displaced from food patches) were more attentive to the handling techniques others employed and were more likely to improve their handling technique after observing a skilled demonstrator. Conversely, adult males, who out-ranked all the other age-sex classes and experienced very little contest competition, were more likely to ignore valuable social information, and less likely to improve their technique after social learning opportunities. The lack of evidence for social learning in adult males, combined with their tendency to need lots of time to practice their handling techniques, suggests that adult males are more likely to improve their foraging skills through trial-and-error.

Our study is unique in that we thoroughly explore how individuals experienced competition to understand how motivated they may have felt to learn this specific foraging technique, given the current social and ecological context. All the monkeys that participated in the experiment quickly discovered techniques for retrieving the banana from the food box. Many of these solutions (e.g., roll/flip the box until the banana fell out or was visible near the hole) often required long handling times, whereas the no-manipulation reach-in technique allowed individuals to consistently retrieve the banana from the food box within a few seconds. Given that fast handling was key to obtaining the highly valued banana when dominant competitors were in the audience 55 , the perceived utility of learning the no-manipulation reach-in technique was likely closely tied to the risk of contest competition with dominant competitors. Because vervet monkeys form linear dominance hierarchies and live in highly despotic societies 53 , 54 , 55 , 56 , dominance rank would be expected to correlate closely with competition experienced. Indeed, we found this was the case when foraging as a group. Rank was a strong predictor of how likely individuals were to have a dominant competitor present or to be aggressed/displaced when group-foraging. However, adult and subadult males were more comfortable leaving the safety of the group and visiting the experiment alone. This allowed them to escape contest competition, such that they were less likely overall, to forage in the presence of dominant competitors. Notably, adult males experienced very little contest competition compared to the other age-sex classes. Not only were they comfortable foraging hundreds of meters away from the group for long periods, they were the highest-ranking group members throughout this study, and they rarely tried to participate in the experiment with another adult male. As a result, adult males rarely foraged in the presence of a dominant and were almost never displaced by a dominant when trying to retrieve the banana from the food box. For these reasons, adult males were likely less motivated than the other age-sex classes to learn an efficient foraging technique that mitigated the costs of contest competition.

Motivation is known to play an important role in learning in humans 22 , 23 , however, it is challenging to investigate the impact it has on learning in species that cannot self-report how motivated they felt to learn a given skill. When working with non-human animals, we must often infer motivation from an individual’s success, speed or persistence in learning the task 25 , 26 , 27 , 36 , 44 , 51 , 74 . In this study, we found that individuals that experienced more contest competition learned the no-manipulation reach-in technique faster. We also found that individuals that frequently experienced contest competition were more likely to attend to the handling techniques others used, particularly if they were still unskilled handlers themselves (i.e., had not learned the no-manipulation reach-in technique yet). These two observations suggest that unskilled monkeys were aware of their knowledge deficit (i.e. metacognition 75 ), and if they frequently suffered from contest competition, they actively sought out social information they could exploit. A strategy that appears to have paid off, as the age-sex classes that were most attentive to social information were also the ones that showed improvement after they had opportunities to learn the no-manipulation reach-in technique from skilled demonstrators. Conversely, individuals who experienced very little contest competition were more likely to ignore valuable social information, fail to improve after opportunities for social learning, and instead learn inefficiently through individual learning. Thus, while we are forced to make inferences about how motivated individuals felt from their behaviour alone, we present a collection of findings that support that the monkeys were more motivated to learn a foraging skill if they were vulnerable to contest competition at food patches.

Our finding that adult males failed to exploit social information contrasts with a number of previous studies that have found adult males do engage in social learning 11 , 13 , 76 . One likely reason we did not observe more social learning among the adult males in this study is that the skill that was being learned (i.e., the no-manipulation reach-in technique) was an improvement over other techniques that were easy to learn and reliable provided access to the food reward. The initial goal of this experiment was to understand how competition impacted foraging decisions when food items varied in their handling time. Consequently, the food box was designed to increase handling time of the half banana, not to be a difficult task to solve. The monkeys did not need to lift or slide a door (solutions common in social learning experiments 13 , 76 , 77 , 78 ) but could simply shake the box until the banana was visible through the hole and then grab it. This meant that adult males did not need to learn the no-manipulation reach-in technique to retrieve the food reward reliably. Once they had learned a technique that worked, albeit an inefficient one, they had relatively little motivation to improve their skills as they were not vulnerable to food loss to dominant competitors. In short, males were likely disinclined to seek out or adopt new possibilities (i.e., conservatism 79 , 80 ). Furthermore, the longer that adult males stick with conservative strategies, the more difficult it may be to inhibit actions (e.g., rolling, tipping, or shaking the food box) that have previously provided them with access to a food reward 81 . A second reason that males may have been unlikely to engage in social learning in this study is that the social setting did not elicit conformity. In a well-known study, van de Waal and colleagues 11 found that adult males that had recently immigrated into a new group conformed to the local social norms: they ignored their own knowledge about food palatability and began to eat the same food (i.e., color of corn) that the members of their new group preferred. In this experiment, the entire group would cluster around the two boxes of brightly-colored corn (i.e., there was a large audience) and because the rest of the group was feeding from one box, it would be conspicuous if the new male were to sit by himself at the other box. As such, it was easy for males to assess what the local social norm was, and their conformity to this norm was highly conspicuous to the members of their new group. Conversely, in our experiment, we only presented one food box at a time and trials were spaced out in time. This meant that there would be no conspicuous social norm to conform to. Additionally, the platforms could not be baited when the majority of the group was nearby as the monkeys would swarm the platforms and start to feed before baiting was complete. To avoid this, we waited until there were only a few monkeys around. This meant that the audience was usually small, or non-existent as adult males often visited the experiment site alone. As a result, there were typically few group members present to signal one’s conformity to.

Studies investigating individual variation in learning in wild animals must often use rough proxies for competitive ability (e.g., age, size, dominance rank) or hunger levels (e.g., fat scores, body weight) to test for motivational differences. However, when researchers fail to find an effect where one was expected, it is unclear if individual variation in motivation does not exist, or if the proxies used inadequately capture it. Here, we show that dominance rank does a poorer job of explaining individual variation in learning speed (and by inference, motivation to learn) than a measure that includes information on individual willingness to forage solitarily to escape contest competition. Dominance rank will likely perform even worse in species that are less social, live in less cohesive groups, have less despotic societies, or when resources are abundant in the environment or the food resource individuals are learning to exploit is less monopolizable (e.g., if multiple food boxes are presented to study subjects). All of these could result in lower levels of contest competition, and so would likely impact motivation to learn a new foraging technique. Therefore, we recommend that future studies endeavour to understand how individuals actually experience competition, and if appropriate, develop more accurate proxies for inferring motivation to learn.

Research interest in social learning and culture in non-human animals has surged over the past couple of decades, and with it, evidence for intra- and interindividual variation in the propensity to learn from others has also accrued 82 . Our findings highlight that motivation can be an important source of variation in learning efficiency and strategies (e.g., social versus individual). While the value of field studies in advancing our understanding of learning has already been lauded 83 , we argue that testing animals in wild settings is particularly critical to understanding the role that motivation plays in learning. Field studies allow researchers to test individuals in conditions that are socially and ecologically sound, where they are exposed to a broad range of challenges that could influence their motivation to access fitness-limiting resources. Conversely, it would be unethical to severely restrict food availability for captive subjects, or house them in social conditions that elicit the intense contest competition that can take place in the wild. Evidence for diminished motivation to learn in captivity is seen in studies that bring wild animals into the lab and observe motivation to decrease over time 31 , and the low participation rates that occur in captive studies, even when subjects have unrestricted access to the experimental apparatus 84 .

A fast-growing body of research highlights that a broad range of species acquire foraging, social and survival skills through social learning 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 . The spread of socially-learned skills has resulted in unique cultural traditions seen in many animals 85 , 86 , 87 . This breadth highlights the adaptive benefits of social learning. However, the work we present here highlights that even when individuals would benefit from using social information to improve their foraging skills, there can be significant variation among individuals in their motivation to use it. While quantifying motivation in non-human animals is challenging, a better understanding of the sources of individual variation in the perceived benefits of learning is key to growing our understanding of how traditions spread through populations.

Data availability

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article are available in the Electronic Supplementary Material.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Eve Smeltzer, Lindah Nabukenya, Dennis Twinomugisha, Matovu Ponsyano, Livingstone Katwere, Hillary Tashobya, Nicholas Robar, Herman Kasozi, and the management team at Nabugabo for their assistance in the field.

University of Toronto Arts and Science Postdoctoral Fellowship,Concordia University,Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada,RGPIN_2016-06321.

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Arseneau-Robar, T.J.M., Anderson, K.A., Sicotte, P. et al. Monkeys who experience more feeding competition utilize social information to learn foraging skills faster. Sci Rep 13 , 11624 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-37536-9

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What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Human Behavior: From Facts to Fiction

When creativity crosses the line..

Posted March 20, 2012 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

In a 2011 Psychology Today post called "What Monkeys Can Teach Us About Human Behavior," Michael Michalko described an experiment involving five monkeys, a ladder, and a banana. Descriptions of this experiment can also be found online, as a result of this story being told many times in various blogs, books, and speeches. The experiment as described in the story, however, never happened.

This is how Michalko described the experiment in his blog post. "This human behavior of not challenging assumptions reminds me of an experiment psychologists performed years ago. They started with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, they hung a banana on a string with a set of stairs placed under it.

"Before long, a monkey went to the stairs and started to climb towards the banana. As soon as he started up the stairs, the psychologists sprayed all of the other monkeys with ice-cold water. After a while, another monkey made an attempt to obtain the banana. As soon as his foot touched the stairs, all of the other monkeys were sprayed with ice-cold water. It's wasn't long before all of the other monkeys would physically prevent any monkey from climbing the stairs.

"Now, the psychologists shut off the cold water, removed one monkey from the cage, and replaced it with a new one. The new monkey saw the banana and started to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attacked him. After another attempt and attack, he discovered that if he tried to climb the stairs, he would be assaulted.

"Next, they removed another of the original five monkeys and replaced it with a new one. The newcomer went to the stairs and was attacked. The previous newcomer took part in the punishment with enthusiasm!

"Likewise, they replaced a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey tried to climb the stairs, he was attacked. The monkeys had no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they were beating any monkey that tried.

"After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys had ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approached the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been around here."

Michalko then concludes: "People sometimes do the same in the workplace. How many times have you heard, "It has always been done this way. Don't mess with what works." Instead of challenging these assumptions, many of us, like the monkeys, simply keep reproducing what has been done before. It's the easiest thing to do."

In a comment on Michalko's blog post, primatologist Frans De Waal expressed some skepticism about the experiment and asked Michalko if he had a scientific reference for this study. In response to the comment from another reader, Michalko posted the following:

"FIVE MONKEYS. This story originated with the research of G.R. Stephenson. (Stephenson, G. R. (1967). Cultural acquisition of a specific learned response among rhesus monkeys. In: Starek, D., Schneider, R., and Kuhn, H. J. (eds.), Progress in Primatology, Stuttgart: Fischer, pp. 279-288.) 

"Stephenson (1967) trained adult male and female rhesus monkeys to avoid manipulating an object and then placed individual naïve animals in a cage with a trained individual of the same age and sex and the object in question.

"In one case, a trained male actually pulled his naïve partner away from the previously punished manipulandum during their period of interaction, whereas the other two trained males exhibited what were described as "threat facial expressions while in a fear posture" when a naïve animal approached the manipulandum.

"When placed alone in the cage with the novel object, naïve males that had been paired with trained males showed greatly reduced manipulation of the training object in comparison with controls.

"Unfortunately, training and testing were not carried out using a discrimination procedure so the nature of the transmitted information cannot be determined, but the data are of considerable interest.  His research inspired the story of five monkeys. Some believe the story is true, while others believed it's an exaggerated account of his research. True story or not, his published research with rhesus monkeys, in my opinion, makes the point."

So Michalko apparently knew that the Stephenson's study did not involve a ladder or a banana (this aspect of the story is inspired by experiments with chimpanzees conducted by Wolfgang Kohler in the 1920s), that the monkeys were not replaced in the group they way he described it in the story, that the monkeys did not attack the individual who tried to climb the ladder (let alone that they "..took part in the punishment with enthusiasm!"), and that in the end no monkey ever again approached the stairs to try for the banana "because as far as they know that's the way it's always been around here."

As for Michalko's last comment "true story or not, his published research with rhesus monkeys, in my opinion, makes the point," I couldn't disagree more. Whether or not the story of the experiment is true makes a big difference. When people report scientific experiments in books or blogs, the readers expect these reports to be true. If an author wants to make up a story to make a point, he should explicitly tell the reader that the story was invented. If the author is unsure as to whether a story is true, he should check his sources or at least warn the readers that the description of the experiment may be inaccurate.

In this case, it appears that Michalko had the original source of the study and knew that it didn't match his description. The real experiment didn't even make the point that Michalko wanted to make, that "monkeys simply keep reproducing what has been done before because it's the easiest thing to do."

Stephenson's experiment was a study of learned fear conditioning in which various objects (conditioned stimuli, CS) were paired with an airblast (the unconditioned stimulus, US). After the conditioning occurred, a male observer was placed in the same enclosure as the model, giving the observer the opportunity to watch the model behave fearfully in the presence of the object. During subsequent testing in isolation, three of the four observers exhibited fear of the object, suggesting that they had learned to fear the object from the behavior of the model.

In reviewing Stephenson's study, psychologist Susan Mineka noted that when female subjects were used, Stephenson found opposite results: Previously fearful models lost their fear as a result of watching the nonfearful behavior of their observers. Mineka noted that "...regardless of its cause, this [sex difference] raises serious questions about the robustness of the phenomenon." Studies conducted by Susan Mineka herself demonstrated that if a snake is used as the conditioned stimulus, fear can be learned from observing the behavior of a model, but this association does not occur if other objects such as kitchen utensils are used.

I asked Dr. Bennett (Jeff) Galef, a comparative psychologist who is an expert in animal social learning to comment on the experiment described by Michalko. He answered "...it strikes me as very unlikely that, in the 1960s, someone with Stephenson's limited ability as an experimentalist could have conceived of, adequately designed, or successfully completed an experiment of the sophistication of that in the story you describe. The story reflects a combination of Kohler's work with chimps, Jacob and Cambell's (1961) work with humans, and Curio and Mineka's work with respectively European blackbirds and monkeys. To my knowledge, no two of these elements were combined in a single experimental paradigm until 1995."

I don't know if the fictionalized version of the Stephenson study was created by a single person or whether every time the story was re-told by a different person, some aspect of it was changed, added, or removed, the way it happens with legends. But whatever the process was, there was a lot of Creative Thinkering involved!

If you like this post, read my book Games Primates Play , and follow me on Twitter .

Dario Maestripieri, Ph.D. , is a professor of comparative human development, evolutionary biology, and neurobiology at the University of Chicago.

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That “Five Monkeys Experiment” Never Happened

You may have seen this story about the Five Monkeys Experiment recently:

Apparently it is supposed to describe a real scientific experiment that was performed on a group of monkeys, and it is supposed to raise profound questions about our tendency to unquestioningly follow the herd. Unfortunately it is complete and utter nonsense, because no such experiment ever happened.

Ironically, so many people are sharing this unverified pseudoscientific gibberish that it really does reveal our tendency to unthinkingly follow the herd; after all, why would you bother verifying an article about monkeys that literally has the tag line “think before you follow”?

This story has been doing the rounds since 1996, and it has never been verified. It seems to have first appeared in a book called Competing For The Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad, and by “appeared” I mean it was just made up. The authors never provided a source. None of the authors who have referred to the experiment in the past eighteen years have provided a source either. None of the appealing memes or infographics that describe the story now provide a source. Suffice to say, there is no source, because the experiment never happened.

(I got some of this information from an internet chatroom, posted by a guy called BlueRaja. If you would like to check up on what I have said, you can do that.)

The article has gained popularity recently because it appeared in a TED Talk by some guy called Eddie Obeng,* showing once again that TED Talks are responsible for the spread of intellectual garbage and superficially appealing, hyperbolic misinformation. A blogger by the name of John Stepper writes about how amazing the Talk was and how Eddie was able to bring this untrue story to life. He then asks if it really happened, and says:

“A quick search reveals it did happen though the details are quite different.”

This is perfectly true, if by “quite different” he really means “not the same at all, in any way.”

Stepper’s “proof” that it happened “a little differently” is an article by G.R. Stephenson called Cultural Acquisition Of A Specific Learned Response Among Rhesus Monkeys (1966). The very existence of a scientific-sounding source seems to be enough to lend this ‘experiment’ some credibility (it’s got a big name and a date and everything) but all you need to do is read the experiment yourself to see that it has absolutely nothing to do with this ‘fable’ at all. They may as well have provided this as a source:

Did Stephenson put five monkeys in a room and spray them with water if they climbed up a ladder to reach a banana? Of course not.

As you can see, the experiment is different in just a couple of minor ways:

Stephenson wanted to know if a learned behaviour in one monkey could induce a lasting effect on a second monkey. He was not making a study of group dynamics or herd behaviour at all.
He examined four sets of unisexual monkey pairs, not five random monkeys in a group.
The objects he used were plastic kitchen utensils, not a banana.
The type of punishment was an air blast, not a water blast.
There was no ladder- the object was just placed at one end of a controlled area.

To summarise, nothing about this real experiment is the same as the story. Nothing at all.

And what were the actual results of this barely relevant, totally different experiment?

Oops…

So in some pairs the new ‘naive’ monkey did learn to fear the object after seeing how the conditioned monkey was afraid of it. However, in other pairs, the fearless behaviour of the naive monkey ended up teaching the conditioned one not to fear the object anymore. Note that this is exactly the wrong type of evidence for a charming story about “following the herd”.

Curiously, the results were gender-specific: in three male-paired cases the learned behaviour was transferred, in three female-paired cases it was not, and in two it was inconclusive. The female monkeys seemed to learn behaviours simply by observation (including cases in which the punished monkey learned that there would be no more air blasts by watching the new monkey play with the object). The male pairs behaved differently, tending to teach a behaviour physically. The punished monkey actively admonished the newer one by pulling them away from the object.

The sample size is small and no bullshit should be inferred.

Unfortunately, a few decades after this study was published some moronic self-help author read it and thought “it’s almost good, but if I make it much more sensational and implausible, I will sell a lot of books! Though I don’t have any real truths, I can help people by showing them essential truths I’ve just made up!” And then you read it on Facebook, and thousands of people shared it, believing it to be true.

It’s one thing to share a meme because it sounds cool. We have all done it, myself included, even though it is a truly terrible misuse of our intelligence and most of us would not want our children to be mindlessly repeating hearsay and gossip because it sounds cool.

However, I can’t help but wonder how a blogger like John Stepper can be so smitten by the power of rhetoric that after hearing this implausible story about five monkeys he tries to validate it by referring to an unrelated study, and decides that “the details are a bit different.” No John, the details are not a bit different, they are so different that it makes your “evidence” irrelevant. Without evidence, you are just helping to spread misinformation. Please, please use your brain.

In fact, everybody, please stop sharing articles like this. It doesn’t take long to find out if something is true. This is one of the things our years of secondary (and perhaps tertiary) education were supposed to teach us: think before you follow!

Now, if only there was a cool story about some scientific-sounding thing I could quote to give my rant a bit more substance…

*UPDATE: As Eddie Obeng points out in the comments below, I was incorrect in saying that he delivered this story at a TED Talk. He definitely did not use cutesy projected graphics to relay uplifting platitudes to an audience of gullible twats at a TED event- he did it at JiveWorld instead, which is probably completely different.

He also insists it is a fable, not a story about a real experiment. This is probably why he introduces it as “an experiment I came across; apparently a group of researchers were looking at behaviour. What they did was, they got five monkeys…”

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77 thoughts on “ That “Five Monkeys Experiment” Never Happened ”

Ironic that the circulating “experiment” is about thinking and not just following the herd and yet people follow the herd in sharing it without checking its validity.

Maybe that was the point.

If you really want to scream, when I just googled “monkey banana ladder,” the first three hits were claims that the experiment actually took place, including this answer:

http://www.answers.com/Q/Did_the_monkey_banana_and_water_spray_experiment_ever_take_place

which only a the end says, “Well, it seems to be true; not in the exact shape that it took here, but close enough.”

It was only beginning with the fourth result in my Google search, an article from Psychology Today , that the debunking of the fiction seemed to begin.

Close enough!? Honestly, what happens in peoples minds when they read these things? I hope my article does something to combat this.

I couldn’t help myself, Virgil. I signed up to Answers.com just so I could edit that page. I wonder how long it will be before someone changes it again?

You’re a hero for truth and science, Chad.

And, who knows, maybe if you stick with that Answers.com account, you can get to be one of those Experts you should follow I see on the right-hand side of the page. They could probably use some new expertise on ties. 😉

Virgil! What happened to your Twitter account?

i suppose its time to do the experiment

Shame you didn’t check your facts. There is no reference to the 5 monkeys in any of my TED talks. Plus anyone with any brains knows a fable from researched material. When Aesop wrote about a fox jumping for grapes only an idiot would believe the fox spoke… I bet you won’t publish this comment

I believe you are correct. John Stepper describes the speech you gave at Jiveworld, not TED. I can’t argue with a fact!

Sadly, many people have not responded to this story as if it is a fable. My frustration is partly because I also expect them to do so. I have edited the Answers.com page about this experiment several times because someone kept changing my answer back to “the experiment was real but slightly different.” Do a quick google search and you will see that almost every reference to this assumes that it really happened.

Also, is it not slightly disingenuous to say that everyone everyone will know this story is a fable when it begins with “scientists did this experiment…” I don’t know how you tell the story, but I doubt you begin with “this isn’t true in any way, in fact there is real evidence that contradicts it completely, but it’s a great story anyway.”

The best part of Eddie’s vitriolic rebuttal is that a simple google search of ‘eddie obeng’ and ‘5 monkeys’ gives me a youtube video where he makes an impassioned 2 minute account of the story.

There is an assumption that, when you tell an anecdote, it has at least some basis in reality. Parroting unsupported statements without fact checking them first is commonly referred to as ‘spreading bull****’ around here.

Defending a tenous position with an aggressive rant certainly doesn’t help your image either. The comparison to Aesop’s fable is outright disingenuous and misleading – as throwcase also mentions!

All matter is a mirror that reflects light and creates images of that light. I’m glad to hear your response Eddie Obeng. Many teachers use analogy and fable to present relationships between the immeasurable (mystery) and the measurable (science). Our current culture is dominated by the “religion” of science and such paradigms prevent many from feeling the truth of messages delivered. Kepler, Copernicus and Galileo were ridiculed and claimed as heretics by the religions of the time. Similar actions are happening in this day and age. What was the driving force behind trying to prove or disprove the existence of a story with a beautiful message? The story of the monkeys in a cage shows what happens when minds listen to what they think they know and teach others lies of how to be in the world. Can others see what is shown in the story about the story of the monkeys? Can we see the mirrors of life showing us our mind being reflected to us? Thank you Eddie Obeng for sharing your wonderful story. Thank you all for showing us how the teaching of the story plays out in our world.

Interesting that you bring up Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo; these three men were not content with the “beautiful stories” of their time, because they could see evidence that suggested otherwise.

What are you praising them for if you don’t like the spirit of evidence-based, truth-seeking scientific inquiry?

Also, is it not odd to criticise the “paradigm” generated by a scientific “religion” if you then fervently believe in a story that claims to be based on a scientific experiment?

This is a good example of anti-intellecutualism thats persisted since we could rationalise.

Great piece and comment arguments! I’m SO glad I found it before I wrote about that story on my blog! Part of the problem is, it really does sound like it is true, because those of us who attempt to dispel the myth makers experience these “beatings” more often than not.

I know what you mean! Glad you liked it

Makes you sort of wonder why, after all this, someone hasn’t actually run the experiment then. it’s not so difficult, right?

Indeed I would love to see it

If it hasn’t happened so far, it certainly won’t be happening today, at least not officially. Ethics is the ”problem”.

Slavoj Zizek in his article named psychologist Harry Harlow as a conducter of this experiment. I don’t think that a guy like Zizek would write something without checking it first, let alone make the whole thing up.

So where is the proof? You can believe hearsay, I will believe proof. I have heard people making the Harlow claim before- I checked through all of his published papers and not one sounds remotely like this experiment. If you can find it, I will happily eat my words.

Also, what Zizek article do you refer to? I have done a quick search and can’t find it. Do you have a link?

Well, of course, if it cant be proven with Google, it doesnt exist. Coz they didnt actually record all of their experiments on tape, and if they dont have PROOF other than their own credentials as professionals and doctors… I wonder, do you require such physical, recordable proof for all the beliefs of science you hold dear? I have no proof of any of Freud’s work, so perhaps I should discredit him. I have no proof of Darwins actual research, perhaps he made it all up. If you desire such proof from experiments that were made when we didnt have such a plethora of physical records and recording devices, then most of the knowledge we function on should be discredited.

To your questions I answer an absolutely unequivocal yes. I, much like the entire scientific profession, do require proof in order to believe a scientific claim.

It is incredible that you mention Freud, because a century of scientific research has in fact discredited much of what he wrote and theorised. So that is an excellent point for my argument. Thanks.

Also with Darwin, all his evidence was catalogued and subsequently researched further, which would not have been possible if it had simply been made up. In fact, Origin Of the Species is a very boring book, because it is so relentlessly factual and evidence based. So again you make an excellent point for the value of scientific proof.

In the absence of a physical or written record or experiment one should at least be able to repeat the experiment and get the same result. This has never been done for this so called monkey “experiment” and if it were to be done I am certain the result would not be the one claimed here.

I appreciate your interest for science and the tenacity you provide in defending the idea of “no proof – didn’t happen”. I also appreciate you are indeed educated and you do your homework before posting about a subject. However, I despise the lack of respect you show to people that have a different opinion. You can make your point without being sarcastic. Now, in regard to your beliefs, I think that someone once said that only a fool is absolutely sure about something. So, you are absolutely sure about this experiment, never actually took place? Just because there is no record of any kind of it? Well, sir, please tell me how do you know that the shape of our galaxy pictured everywhere, is the real one? Do we have a probe, o space ship of any form, outside our galaxy, far enough to actually take that picture? If not, do we have enough data to map our entire galaxy precisely? It’s just one example that comes to mind… In regard to the monkeys, you may be right: the experiment may have never took place. But the absence of proof, does not necessary implies the absence of the event itself… Probable cause? Animal cruelty. This would not have been an experiment that gives results that benefits humans to justify beating up the monkeys. So, if I did it anyway, why should I publicly admit to it? It would have been a pure psychological experiment. So, why record it? Just sayin’… Thank you for taking the time to read this!

“So, you are absolutely sure about this experiment, never actually took place? Just because there is no record of any kind of it? ”

Yes. The bare minimum required of a scientific proof is that it can be demonstrated. Existing is indeed a great demonstration.

“Well, sir, please tell me how do you know that the shape of our galaxy pictured everywhere, is the real one? ”

I don’t. I never said I did. I presume, like all lasting scientific models and theories, that it is the best guess we have based on the observable evidence.

“But the absence of proof, does not necessary implies the absence of the event itself… ”

That is exactly what it implies. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim. Without proof, it is just a claim, no more. Your theory about animal cruelty is logical, but unnecessary. We do not need to multiply explanations as to why there is no record of this experiment- there is no record because it never happened.

Also, there were very many experiments done in the 20th century that were avidly cruel and unashamedly so. For example, the work of Harlow and his “rape rack.” So even if your explanation was needed, it would be unconvincing anyway.

B.F. Skinner mentions something almost identical in Walden Two, his utopian novel: a herd of sheep that never approach a fence even after it has ceased to be electrified. I think the relevance of that episode to the rest of the book is that structures taken for granted might simply be ingrained, and not necessarily useful (kind of a prerequisite for any utopia, it appears near the beginning and I guess it sets the scene), but I’m not sure what its scientific basis is, if any. Skinner has not been wholly innocent of purveying dodgy ideas. Maybe that’s where they got it from.

Fascinating! Thanks for this comment. I had no idea B.F Skinner wrote a novel at all, and the little I have just read about it has piqued my interest greatly. It is entirely possible that this is indeed where others got the idea from.

Love your blog – entertaining and informative! One of my earlier gigs was playing in a circus band, the kind with elephants and other animals. Once in Thunder Bay, ON we had the elephants inside of the building overnight (a curling rink) in the same area as the trailers where people were staying. it was April and too cold to stay outside. In between them and the people was a single shoestring thick cord wrapped around the support beams making an impromptu corral. I inquired and was reassured that since they had previously been in such enclosures with electrified barrier cords, they never bothered to test their limits and go beyond them. On the second night we were there, our MD felt his trailer (a tiny two-toned brown Boler we called the hamburger) start to shake. Our MD Ross opened his window curtain and saw this big elephant eye blinking at him, just like the scene from Jurassic Park. But I guess these elephants didn’t about read the monkey experiment or B.F. Skinner.

Brilliant! That’s possibly my favourite comment ever

Well I hate to be that dumb monkey to say this, but the experiment isn’t about 5 monkeys is it? Isn’t it about a planet filled with monkeys? The story about the 5 monkeys looks more like a banana to me.. And we can pretend for the arguments sake that you are the coldshower Throwcase 😀

Just for the arguments sake! It is after all “a mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” –

To test theories it’s almost always better to use unknowing subjects. Much more of a natural atmosphere. But also, if you tell a human being that he’s a monkey, he will more likely then not, take it as an insult. The monkey get’s pissed and walks away, and you have a monkey experiment with no monkeys. Better is to use yourself as the monkey/banana to play dumb and let smarter monkeys do the hard work. All you have to do is to rattle the cage. Depending mainly on how much frustration the dumb monkey is presenting to the others, determines if the experiment is a success or not. low amount of frustration = nobody cares. high amount of frustration = Many cares. Rattle to much and people will want to kill you. Proof? Mention the name Beiber on your social media and you’ll go: “Oh I see what you’re talking about. LOL!”

This Tactic is used a lot in corporate espionage and journalism to gather information and secrets.

“You’ve got to play fool to catch wise sometimes” – Old Jamaican proverb

Have a great day Throwcase, was really fun and interesting to read your Aristotle! And thanks for turning me from a dumb monkey into a sneaky Elephant 😉

Cheerio friend!

But even if it were true, doesn’t it show the exact opposite of what it should?

If every time a monkey goes up the ladder, something bad happens to all the monkeys, then it makes sense to stop monkeys from going up the ladder.

And after all the monkeys have ben replaced, how are they supposed to know that the bad thing won’t continue to happen if one of them goes up the ladder?

So stopping the new monkeys form going up the ladder, far from being stupid like the story presents it as, is actually absolutely sensible.

It’s only because we know that the experimenters won’t give the cold shower that it looks stupid to us, looking on from outside. But how are the monkeys supposed to know that? From their point of view it’s totally sensible to stop monkeys climbing the ladder.

It looks to me like a prime example of Chesterton’s fence.

Excellent point, and I am glad to be introduced to the idea of Chesterton’s fence- thanks!

@Q I am not sure when you say that the experiment, if true, would prove the opposite? What do you mean “opposite”. I think if it were true, it would indeed prove the existence of herd behavior. It’s just that it would also show, that in some cases, herd behavior actually makes sense. At least to the participants! But indeed there are many cases where herd behavior demonstrably works. I think you will find that the reasoning “lots of people are doing it, so it must work to some degree”, considerably more than 50% of the time, is a very valid assumption.

stumbled across this “experiment” a few years ago… tried to find sources but turned up short. So frustrating! Great to finally categorize the story as allegorical rather than having scientific merit. Thanks for easing my mind. ciao.

Glad to help!

You made one major mistake. You didnt get that its not a scientific claim that is about the monkeys behavior. Its a metaphorical story.

If it is only metaphorical, why does it need to have scientists in the story at all? Why do so many people believe that it is a real experiment? Why does it have an accompanying scientific source that is supposed to lend credence to the whole experiment but actually disproves it? Why not come up with a better metaphor, one that doesn’t begin with “a group of scientists ran an experiment…”

This is a scientific experiment. This can be used to check human beings how well they respond to social compliance. Derren Brown shows this in his experiment The Push on Youtube. As that Mr.Nobody guy said earlier in a strange way. Switch the word monkies with humans, switch the word cage with society/culture/religion.

Forget the “monkey” experiment and try to see the bigger picture. This “story” is not about monkies. You’re all right when you say it didn’t happen. Unless you believe in evolution and view human beings as a primate and thus, a sort of a monkey. It just goes to show that even we science people can be fooled. Mainly because we are very keen to take experiments literal.

It’s pretty long the experiment he did. But the main purpose about his experiment was to find out if we can use social compliance to push someone off a building and commit murder. So yea. Pretty interesting. He uses this “monkey in the cage” tactic to sort out the people who didn’t respond to social compliance from the ones who did. Whoever wrote this story is talking about social compliance using metaphors it would seem. That’s why we can’t see the science in it.

So seemed that Mr.Nobody guy be doing as well btw. Speaking in Metaphors that is.

It wasn’t a scientific experiment. It didn’t happen.

I get the metaphor. I might have liked the metaphor, if it was presented as a metaphor. It is not. It is presented as a scientific experiment.

It may illustrate a truth, of course, but that is a different thing. In that case, the opening of the story should read “This didn’t happen, but it illustrates a truth.” Dale Carnegie wrote exactly that sort of line in his book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. He says “I have among my clippings a story I know never happened, but it illustrates a truth, so I’ll repeat it.” Why is that too hard for so many others to do?

You are right in that it literally didn’t happen. But if you navigate through the world and take everything literal, then doesn’t that make you pretty blind? When in today’s world lies and manipulation is far more effective and widely used then logic and scientific facts? After all. You where about to disregard this entire “experiment” But then others come along and tell you it’s more to it. Quite important the entire topic of social compliance it turns out.

That’s true: I am right.

I like the article – the author of it, however, is ‘obviously’ a complete arrogant, pompous, pretentious, prick. The article “obviously” didn’t need to be written in a way that makes it sound that …”well since you read it on the internet ‘obviously’ it must ‘obviously’ NOT be true.” Perhaps in the future this author can spend more time sharing knowledge in a constructive way…but I doubt that since…the likelihood of someone, like this author, who ‘obviously’ knows it all, of putting his feet on the ground and actually being at our level…is quite low.

Good point. I think the use of ‘obviously’ does indeed convey a less than ideal attitude, though I allowed myself to use it in the hopes that more people would click on the link.

And yet: https://www.facebook.com/TheRealMatrix777/videos/1741507356120817/?pnref=story

Haha- excellent. Thanks for sharing!

I have my doubts about how staged that clip might be. Let’s assume it is true and none of those people were actors, at least it was filmed and there is solid proof about what these people did. That has always been my complaint about the five monkeys story: it claims to be from a scientific experiment that never happened.

“That has always been my complaint about the five monkeys story: it claims to be from a scientific experiment that never happened.”

But if we assume that the clip is true, then there is nothing to discuss. You were right from the beginning that the five monkey experiment is just a made story which explains a true phenomena in a more fancy way (again, if the clip is true or if the conclusion of the original paper is correct).

My complaint is the way you handle this subject: – I already explained my point about “inferring bs” in my other comment

– The following are really irrelevant, it looks like you are just trying to use the proof by example fallacy. The objects he used were plastic kitchen utensils, not a banana. The type of punishment was an air blast, not a water blast. There was no ladder- the object was just placed at one end of a controlled area.

– Stephenson wanted to know if a learned behaviour in one monkey could induce a lasting effect on a second monkey. He was not making a study of group dynamics or herd behaviour at all. Only this difference is somewhat valid in my opinion but they are still related to each other. That is, the failure of the first experiment wouldn’t invalidate the point of the second hypothetical experiment (because of peer pressure) but its success would increase the success probability of the hypothetical experiment.

The point being that this is really how primates behave, including people of course.

Is that your belief? Or is there actual proof for it? Sure, I see some herd behaviour around me too, when I’m in a cynical mood. The point is: herd behaviour may not be as strong as we believe it to be, we might just be seeing it everywhere because we WANT to see it, or because we assume it exists. The real point is that there is no scientific proof that primates or even humans really behave this way, and to such a strong degree. Not until there is an ACTUAL experiment with ACTUAL proof that we can see/read. Sure, I readily believe there is some herd behaviour in apes and people. It’s just there is also curiosity, inventiveness, learning skills and the capability of independent thought, that will “temper” the effect of herd behaviour in people. That’s why we don’t ALWAYS do what other people are doing. You might even say that our wariness of behaving like a herd-animal keeps it somewhat in check, most of the time.

Like Throwcase said elsewhere: there are videos with people repeating stupid behaviour on YouTube for instance. But… where those experiments real? Were there any staged events with actors? And even if they weren’t, were the experiments scientifically valid? Are they documented and peer-reviewed? And can we, or at least other scientists, see that documentation somewhere? Or were they just made by some TV-show with a half decent understanding of how to do a proper scientific experiment.

http://www.wisdompills.com/2014/05/28/the-famous-social-experiment-5-monkeys-a-ladder/ This give some souece of experiment.

No it didn’t

I’m surprised nobody has tried to recreate this experiment, although there is stuff like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AegLdB7UI4U

Yes I was fascinated to see that clip! I wonder how staged it is, though… I would be keen to see more.

Have you considered that the fact that the study never happened and yet the fiction was so easily propagated as fact supports the central point of the ficitonalized “study”?

There being something to debunk that you considered worth the effort of this article in effect *emphasizes* that the phenomenon occurs and is robust enough to warrant this kind of attention.

This just raises the question why you were interested in debunking details of factual inaccuracy when the fact that they were inaccurate just exemplifies the potency of uncritical, self-reinforcing credulity induced by social influence, which is precisely the point of the five monkeys study-cum-allegorical-fiction.

I think you just demonstrated the opposite of your implicit intent. Correct me if I’m wrong.

You have pointed out the central irony that makes the success of this meme so frustrating; yes, it was easily propagated because people just presumed it was true, but no, that popularity does not make the story true. Facts are always worth declaring, especially in the face of mounting untruths. The fact that the meme literally says “think before you follow” and people were willing to share this without actually thinking about it, is absurd. Though it might “exemplify the potency of uncritical, self-reinforcing credulity”, it does so in the name of going against the herd and thinking for yourself. The irony is endless.

Note I didn’t claim that popularity makes the story true, lol.

There are two pieces to this: the story’s facticity and the truth of the point made by what we agree was a fiction. I’m just pointing out that you chose to deal with the lesser issue, and that getting taken for true even though it’s not exemplifies the story’s point and serves as evidence for the truth of its point.

In other words, the story is a metaphor, not a rendition of fact; but like all metaphors, the truth it communicates doesn’t suffer merely because fiction was used to impart it. My point was that your debunk of the story’s facticity doesn’t detract from the truth of the story’s point and only shows how powerful metaphors are.

From a logical standpoint, showing the story to be fiction has no bearing on the truth of the point it makes about a phenomenon that is quite real and prevalent.

So the investment you made in disproving the facticity of the story only confirms that metaphors are powerful, even when presented as fact, and thus demonstrates the truth of the story’s point: it’s easy to form beliefs without facts. Given that your article seems to overlook that baby in your attention to its bathwater, I found that ironic.

I guess another way to look at this is that you seem to be confusing two different claims. One is that the experiment proves it’s possible to create beliefs without awareness of any factual basis for the belief. Debunking the experiment as a hoax would impact that claim. The other claim is that this fictional experiment nicely highlights the unreasonableness of a phenomenon that’s common and recognizable and — as anyone who has worked in any kind of long-running governance structure can tell you, whether it’s in business, government, or religion — happens all the time. You addressed the first claim, not the second. What’s more, the rhetorical implication of the article (by omission, so it’s easy to let it slip in,) is that dealing with the first claim has a bearing on the second one. But of course, that’s just poppycock. 😀

I do not see “the truth” as the lesser issue. The truth is always the more important issue. The fact that people believe this myth because it “seems” to be true still does not prove that the story is true. If anything, it proves that the meme is useless and self-contradictory, because it supposed to be an injunction NOT to believe things for superficial, and unexamined reasons.

I agree with you that truth is the most important part.

One way of simplifying and shortening down hard-to-grasp lessons and truths, are to break it down into easy to understand concepts. It’s called pedagogy. It’s not in general targeted towards very intelligent people like yourself. Or people who already understands the psychology behind it.

If we go back in our minds to when we we’re kids, we know that to be true. We didn’t start learning by counting hard-to-grasp mathematics. We started by counting apples and things like that.

I think the major problem we’re having here is the collision with different fields of experiences. To understand the underlying reason to why this is a great metaphorical lesson, one needs quite a lot of knowledge about psychology, neurology and overall history. To understand human behaviour overall.

I will say it again. You’re right about the truth is the most important part to understand. So pointing out that this experiment concerning monkeys in a cage never happen is correct.

But it’s also true that the psychological phenomenon of which this story is based upon is also true. So it’s not a “myth” either.

Derren Brown is nothing short of being an expert at these things. None of us here knows more about manipulating people’s behaviour and thoughts then he can. He puts this into practice in “The Game show – experiment”

I just think he explains the inner working of how this works in practice in a very interesting way by making fun and dramatic ways to watch it. Targeted towards people who learn faster by watching rather then reading.

That was the reason to why I mentioned him instead of a scientifical paper to read. If you like to read about it instead, I could find a real scientifical paper where this is being confirmed.

One of the most famous experiment where this happens is called “The Stanford Prison Experiment”. They took in a group of civilians and told half the group that they where prisoners and the other half was prison guards. There’s even a movie about that real experiment.

I think that movie (with the same name from 2015) would be more interesting for everyone to look at. Since it’s based on a real experiment. The 5 monkeys are not. I think the 5 monkeys was meant to explain it in a pedagogical way to children if anything.

Biggest example of when the same concept happen on a grander scale was Nazi Germany.

It’s all based in compliance.

I hope you find one or more of them interesting enough to learn more about. Since you expressed an interest when someone sent a video regarding it, but wasn’t sure if it was staged or not.

After all. Marketing agencies use the same knowledge to make the majority of people to buy stuff they don’t really need.

That’s why most of them aren’t targeting markets and people who they genuinely believe needs their products. Rather who’s more likely to buy products based on impulses.

You’re very right in pointing out the flaw in the truth of the story. Those who wrote it shouldn’t have described it using words as science and experiment. Because those are not based in metaphors. It just portrays the underlying facts which it is based on in a bad light. Specially when we come across the fact that the 5 monkey story isn’t based in a real experiment. We’ll just disregard the entire story instead since we think it’s based in fantasy rather then truth.

I thought it was real because of my knowledge about human psychology and neurology. So I thank you for pointing out that it wasn’t the case.

Have a great day Throwcase!

No one said truth is not important, so I’m not sure who you’re addressing there. Ghosts?

You conflated two things, one more important than the other, and so the truth of the one is more important than the truth of the other, but you focused on the less important issue as if it discredited the more important issue.

Question 1: Truth of the phenomenon that the metaphor portrays. This is the more important issue you don’t seem to like and failed to give it its due.

Question 2: The truth of the claim that the experiment in fact occurred.

You fail to grasp that these are independent questions, and disproving the second actually has no bearing on the truth or value of the first.

This is basic logic, dude.

I’ll give you an example. I tell you I conducted an experiment and found that if you jump off a cliff you’ll be smashed against the rocks against the bottom. In fact, I conducted no such experiment.

Your article is the equivalent of arguing that since my claim to have done an experiment is false, my conclusion is suspect or even flat out wrong. Not only would that be incorrect in the example’s case — you really will get smashed against the rocks if you jump off the cliff — the idea that disproving my claim to have performed an experiment has any bearing on the truth of the conclusion of the bogus experiment is just silly. There is no connection. It has no bearing. Just like your article.

If the phenomenon is so true why do we need to invent experiments to describe it? No one benefits from this. A scientific experiment either happened or it didn’t, and misinformation of any form should be corrected. If the phenomenon is true, let us conduct a real experiment to prove it, or invent a fictional story to describe it. There is no need to start that fictional story with the supposedly genuine claim that “a group of scientists” were involved. That is a lie.

Or, as you posted on your blog:

“If their purposes were honorable, they would be in possession of facts, of the truth of what’s really going on, and they wouldn’t need bullshit.

Resorting to bullshit proves dishonesty on a level even deeper than lying.”

Millard and Damien basically have summed up what I wanted to say, probably in a much better way than I would have been able to.

I just want to point out something, from the edit at the bottom of you rant:

“He also insists it is a fable, not a story about a real experiment. This is probably why he introduces it as “an experiment I came across; apparently a group of researchers were looking at behaviour. What they did was, they got five monkeys…””

As soon as the word “apparently” appear, I would assume this is not a scietific claim. The story of the scientists conduction this experiment is indeed like a fable, designed to explain something real in an easy to grasp way. And I guess the reason people share it so easily, is because they know it to be true from their own experience. It’s like this experiment goes on in real life, for everyone, always.

Wow, wrote a nice long response and it disappeared. Oh well.

Well, how about… https://www.facebook.com/anonews.co/videos/1313784798633076/?hc_ref=NEWSFEED

Indeed! Someone else posted that as well. If it is not faked in any way, it would be much better proof than this monkey story.

@Throwcase: I told you such an experiment has already been done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jdOoxnr7AI

This phenomenon has been studied for quite some time now. It’s being studied as we speak actually. But it’s okey. You can continue to live in denial.. However, you’re not being scientific about this. Just sayin.

Helpful Termonology:

Conformity: Is a type of social influence involving a change in belief or behavior in order to fit in with a group. This change is in response to real (involving the physical presence of others) or imagined (involving the pressure of social norms / expectations) group pressure.

Source: http://www.simplypsychology.org/conformity.html

Compliance: Refers to a response—specifically, a submission—made in reaction to a request. The request may be explicit (i.e., foot-in-the-door technique) or implicit (i.e., advertising). The target may or may not recognize that he or she is being urged to act in a particular way. (In these cases presented we’re looking at the banana eater and the prisoners)

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compliance_(psychology)

Social compliance (business): Result of conformance to the rules of social accountability by the extended organization including not only the organization’s own policies and practices but also those of its supply and distribution chains. It is a continuing process in which the involved parties keep on looking for better ways to protect the health, safety, and fundamental rights of their employees, and to protect and enhance the community and environment in which they operate.

Source: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/social-compliance.html

You use the words “such an experiment has already been done”. Since you are unable to say “this experiment has already been done”, my point stands: the five monkey experiment never happened. The rest of your links are fascinating, but pointless. This article is about whether or not the five monkey experiment actually happened. (It didn’t.)

As I said. You’re not being scientific about this in order to not be in the wrong. Which we’ve already cleared you of being, regarding the five monkey experiment. So I don’t see how you can still be stuck on that. But to say that it is “pointless” to point out that the lesson behind the story is true is equally if not more important to emphasis, is quite chocking to hear to be honest.

For you to be so focused on dissproving the five monkey story is the equivelent of me going through every episode of Dexters laboratory and dissproving everything that is scientifically wrong with that show. Now that is the definition of something pointless.

To direct you to the real experiments regarding this is a civic duty since you have completely missed to cover that in your article. Which is okey. It’s your article. But it would be cool of you to write a follow up, covering the real experiments as a compliment to the facts of this phenomenon.

It’s nat true scientifically , but still useful to convince people. There are lots of fanatics around us

Eagleheart has it right. The religion of science, of the new credibility, has made us disbelieve what still cannot be disproven. The monkeys that curse and yet cause slowdowns on the roads as soon as there’s a rubber-necking opportunity are in the millions. I was in one of these festivals the other day, true celebrations of our irrational behavior. That the same shifting horde would turn around and put the imprimatur of ‘science’ on our lemming-like behavior does not negate what we see in our own unscientific reflections at the end of a long day.

Come on guys this however doubt able experiment proofs one point. If you are going to change monkeys, change all at the same time. You can use “word” politics instead of monkeys.

Glad to see someone calling out those absurd TED talks, where virtually anyone can be an expert and every talk is presented as life-changing incredible advice.

Seems like TED is popular the way “I Fucking Love Science” is popular. The people who are into that stuff are the same people clogging everyone’s social media feeds with GIF’d platitudes and articles about scientific research, not because they actually understand that stuff, but because they want people to *think* they understand and view them as intellectuals.

It’s like high school kids who shape their identities around the music they like and the clothes they wear — if you want to present yourself as an intellectual online, you retweet links to TED talks and post photographs of nature and star systems captioned as “science.” Really? A tiger is “science”? A Jovian planet is “science”?

And of course, these people don’t know shit. They don’t actually read the articles or watch the videos they’re reposting, they just want you to think they do. Cause they’re smart and stuff.

Excellent reply. Great minds think alike. 🙂

Hmmmm. Your source for this article was the internet. Your article Must be true lol you cannot verify nor deny everything. It is the way people act. Your article seems to insinuate that monkeys are smarter than people.

Comments are closed.

IMAGES

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psychology
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The Truth of The Monkey Ladder Experiment
A group of scientists/researchers place five monkeys in a room that contains a ladder in the center and a banana atop the ladder. It isn't long before one of the monkeys attempts to go for the banana but as soon as that happens, a scientist comes in and sprays all the monkeys with ice-cold water from a hose. If any other monkey attempts to go ...
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In this video I explain the importance of using primary sources to support ones claims, and focus on the example of the oft-cited 'Monkey Ladder Banana' expe...
Organizational Culture and the 5 Monkeys Experiment
It goes like this: 5 monkeys were placed in a cage as part of an experiment. In the middle of the cage was a ladder with bananas on the top rung. Every time a monkey tried to climb the ladder, the experimenter sprayed all of the monkeys with icy water. Eventually, each time a monkey started to climb the ladder, the other ones pulled him off and ...
JLB1568
In this video I explain the importance of using primary sources to support ones claims, and focus on the example of the oft-cited 'Monkey Ladder Banana' experiment. This experiment involved five monkeys in a cage who were all sprayed with water if any of them climbed a ladder to get bananas; soon they learned to physically harm any fellow ...
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There are a large number of sites describing the so called "Monkey Experiment" where 5 or so monkeys are put in a room with a banana suspended at the top. A ladder is introduced, and whenever a monkey approaches the ladder the rest are shot with cold water. Naturally the monkeys quickly learn to associate this behavior with the negative ...
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The pen, described by Kohler as a playground, was provided with a variety of objects including boxes, poles, and sticks, with which the primates could experiment. Kohler constructed a variety of problems for the chimps, each of which involved obtaining food that was not directly accessible. In the simplest task, food was put on the other side ...
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Problem Statement. Suppose the problem is as given below −. A hungry monkey is in a room, and he is near the door. The monkey is on the floor. Bananas have been hung from the center of the ceiling of the room. There is a block (or chair) present in the room near the window. The monkey wants the banana, but cannot reach it.
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A group of scientists placed five monkeys in a cage. In the cage, they also placed a ladder with a banana at the top. Every time a monkey climbed the ladder to grab the banana, the remaining four monkeys were sprayed with ice-cold water. This was repeated several times. After a while, the monkeys learned that climbing the ladder had unpleasant ...
"What is your Banana?"
A group of scientists did an experiment by placing 5 monkeys in a room and at the middle they placed a ladder with bananas on the top. Monkeys, being tempted by banana, climbed up the ladder to ...
Monkeys who experience more feeding competition utilize social ...
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That "Five Monkeys Experiment" Never Happened
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