Dataset marmoset Snowdrift

Social primates constantly face situations in which their preferences collide and they need to engineer strategies to overcome conflicts of interest. Studies with chimpanzees have found that they use competitive strategies to overcome social dilemmas, maximizing their own benefits while minimizing the loss of rewards. However, little is known about how other primates that rely more on cooperation would overcome similar dilemmas. We therefore presented male-female pairs of common marmosets (cooperative breeders) with two experiments of an action-based paradigm that creates a conflict of interest over access to an unequal reward distribution. Rather than engaging in mutual defection, marmosets were able to overcome this social dilemma over time, by developing a mix of strategic behaviors (predominantly by females) and tolerance to disadvantageous reward distributions (predominantly by males). This mix of behavioral strategies yielded more and better rewards for the females. Importantly, s...