Chimpanzees Perform Better on Computer Tasks When There Is an Audience, Study Finds [Video]

When we have an audience, it can affect how well we perform. New research has found that the performance of chimpanzees on challenging computer tasks is influenced by how many humans are watching.

The findings of the study suggest that the “audience effect” existed before reputation-based human societies, a press release from Cell Press said.

“It was very surprising to find that chimpanzees are affected in their task performance by audience members, and by human audience members nonetheless,” said Christen Lin of Kyoto University’s Primate Research Institute, in the press release. “One might not expect a chimp to particularly care if another species is watching them perform a task, but the fact that they seem to be affected by human audiences even depending on the difficulty of the task suggests that this relationship is more complex than we would have initially expected.”

The researchers set out to see if the audience effect — frequently attributed to reputation …