“Applying well-established psychological paradigms to our closest relatives represents a promising approach for providing insight into similarities and differences between humans and apes. Numerous articles have been published on the dot-probe task, showing that humans have an attentional bias toward emotions, especially when threatening. For social species like primates, efficiently responding to others’ emotions has great survival value. Observational research has shown that, compared with humans and chimpanzees, bonobos excel in regulating their own and others’ emotions, thereby preventing conflicts from escalating. The present report is an initial effort to apply a psychological test to the bonobo, and demonstrates that they, like humans, have heightened attention to emotional—compared with neutral—conspecifics, but are mostly drawn toward protective and affiliative.”

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Kret ME, Jaasma L, Bionda T and Wijnen JG: Bonobos (Pan paniscus) show an attentional bias toward conspecifics’ emotions. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 113(14): 3761-3766 (2016).

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26976586

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