Question

Earlier in the semester, we learned that capuchin monkeys are risk-seeking when no one is watching but are risk adverse when another monkey is watching. What is a possible explanation for this shift in risk preferences?

Answer 1

capuchin monkeys are the new world monkeys which is known as the chimpanzee , they have the extremely huge brain and body size

they were living as under as large social groups.and they are socially adaptive and they have a tolerant mentality as well.A number of different labs have successfully taught capuchins this trading methodology using an individual experimenter who would reward a capuchin subject for handing her the token. In this  set-up, capuchins choices between multiple different traders , each of whom would deliver different kinds or amounts of goods when presented with a single token. In this way, we were able to put capuchins into a situation much like an economic market – one in which they could establish preferences across different bundles of goods. introduccing  price and wealth changes and examine how such changes affected capuchins ’ purchasing behavior

the token-trading set-up to explore whether capuchins behave broadly rationally in this new economic market. monkeys with a choice between traders who offered two different kinds of food that the monkeys liked equally, e.g. apple slices and grapes. after this experiement it is observed that capuchins traders spent about half of their tokens on apples and half on grapes. We then introduced a compensated price shift, basically putting one of the goods, say apples, on sale by providing double the quantity for a single token. monkeys bought more of the cheaper food when it went on sale, behaving rationally as a human consumer would to this shift in the prices. We then examined whether the capuchins prefer a trading option that weakly dominates, or more specifically, one that provides the most food overall. We presented the monkeys with a choice between one experimenter who always offered (and gave) one piece of apple, and a second experimenter who always offered two pieces of apple but half the time gave one piece, and half the time gave two. Note that this second trader was a risky choice, but he on average gave one and half pieces of apple which was a better deal than the certain one piece of apple offered by the first experimenter. When faced with this choice, the capuchins preferred to trade with the second experimenter, again choosing the option that allowed them to make the most of their token budget ().

These results demonstrate a few important features of our capuchin market. First and most importantly, the capuchins seem to understand the market we have created for them; with little training, our capuchins were able to pick up information about each trader's past behaviour and use that information to make informed choices in the market. Second, our monkeys appear to behave rationally in the market, selectively trading with experimenters who offer them a better deal. Put in more economic terms, our capuchins prefer options that stochastically dominate, ones that tend to give them more food overall. In addition, our capuchins reliably shift their consumption to the cheaper good when the prices change, just as humans do.