How Chimps Avoid Temptation

Through some experiments, researchers have been able to demonstrate that chimpanzees are capable to distract their minds by playing with games, thus to avoid being tempted by some temptations, in exchange for themselves according to the time they passed avoiding them.
As we (humans) do certain actions in exchange for others (for example we save some money destinated to food and we spend it later on a cinema ticket, or we study all week so we can go out on weekend), researchers have demonstrated that this kind of congintive and conductual knowledge of self distraction was also present on primates.

"The experiment"

At first they put 4 chimpanzees under a stimulus, as well as it is a candy dispenser where they could eat as many candies as this container had. After this, chimpanzees had to wait for until the dispenser started to fill itself again, so as long as the wait was, bigger was the reward.
Then, the researchers introduced into the ambient some toys in the way that chimpanzees could wait the filling deposit time by playing. In this way they could distract themselves. This distraction technique was proved by showing to the primates how the deposit was getting fill but without getting the candies yet.
Results showed that chimpanzees spent more time playing with toys when they didn`t have any restriction related to get the candies from the dispenser than when they did have it.

By this way they demonstrated that playing with toys was a puntual strategy to control the impulse or temptation to eat the candies.

This study was researched in Georgia State University in Atlanta.

For more information visit the web site:

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2007/822/2