DOI: 10.5061/dryad.4mw6m90mr
title: Chimpanzees and children are more curious about social interactions than individual actions

description: Curiosity is adaptive, enhances learning, and reduces uncertainty. Social
 curiosity is defined as the motivation to gain information about the
 actions, relationships, and psychology of others. Little is known about
 the developmental and evolutionary roots of such social curiosity. Here,
 across three comparative studies, we investigate whether chimpanzees (N =
 27) and young children (4 - 6 years old, N = 94) show particular interest
 in social interactions among third parties. Chimpanzees and children
 preferred to watch videos of social interactions compared to videos of a
 single conspecific (Experiment 1), and young children and male chimpanzees
 even paid a material cost to gain social information (Experiment 2).
 Finally, our results show that boys become more curious about negative
 social interactions whereas girls become more curious about positive
 social interactions as they develop, while chimpanzees demonstrated no
 preference for negative versus positive social interactions (Experiment
 3). Taken together, these findings suggest that social curiosity emerges
 early in human ontogeny and is shared with one of our two closest living
 relatives, the chimpanzees.
description: # Chimpanzees and children are more curious about social interactions than
 individual actions
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4mw6m90mr](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.4mw6m90mr) ## Description of the data and file structure To test whether chimpanzees and children are curious about social interactions and whether social information is rewarding, we designed a simple setup using two “Curiosity Boxes”. A tablet was placed inside each box, which allowed the experimenter to simultaneously present participants with two different videos. In Experiment 1, participants were presented with a video of social interactions between conspecifics in one box, and a video of a conspecific acting alone in the other box. In Experiment 2, participants were presented with a reward-dispenser that periodically dispensed rewards (marbles for children, and jackfruit seeds for chimpanzees) in one box, and a video of a social interaction in the other box. In Experiment 3, participants were presented with videos of positive social interactions (like playing and grooming) in one box, and videos of negative social interactions (like conflict) in the other box. Participants were given a short amount of time to explore both boxes, and we recorded the length of time that they spent watching each video or collecting the rewards. We also measured the maximum height at which children raised the box doors. ### Variables * ID: Participant ID * Age_Months: Participant age in months * Gender: Participant gender * Trial_Number: Trial Number * Social_Video_Side: Which box the social video was presented in * Video_Names: Names of video stimuli * Fam_Right_Box: Whether participants opened the box during familiarization with the right box * Fam_Left_Box: Whether participants opened the box during familiarization of the left box * Opens_RightVideo: Whether participants opened the right box * Opens_LeftVideo: Whether participants opened the left box * RightVideo_Height: How high participants opened the right box * LeftVideo_Height: How high participants opened the left box * RightVideo_Time: How long participants spent watching the video in the right box * LeftVideo_Time: How long participants spent watching the video in the left box * N_Switch: Number of times participants switched between boxes * First_Box: Which box did participants open first ## Code/software Microsoft Excel or similar ## Version changes **15-Apr-2025:** Added code for all analyses that appear in the related manuscript