Georgia State researchers found resembling personality traits in chimpanzees and humans, according to a May 6 Georgia State news release.
The two main personality types found in chimpanzees were dominant Alpha and the less dominant Beta.
These two types were further broken down into subcategories of personalities, which were found to be similar to human’s personalities, according to the news release.
The results of the research displayed chimpanzees’ personality to be based off of neurobiology and evolutionary basis, the news release states.
Robert Latzman, Assistant Professor of Psychology, said he wanted to understand the basic biological roots of personality.
“We wanted to try understand these processes in a non-human primate model, which allows for an understanding of the basic biological roots,” Latzman said. “More rooted in biology than something like in humans, where there is a lot of sociocultural factors that may influence the expression of the dispositions.”
Latzman also said the reason why chimpanzees were chosen to be a researched group, is because they share a substantial amount of shared similar variants with humans.
“Chimps show interpersonal social behaviors that are very similar to humans with regard to things like empathy and with regard to things like emotional understanding of others in a way that is very very important for comparison of basic dispositional processes, and also to things that are not shown by other animals,” he said.
The 174 chimpanzees were evaluated using the Chimpanzee Personality Questionnaire that was filled out by their caregivers, according to the news release.
The questionnaire had 43 categories asking questions such as if the chimp was excitable, playful or dominant, the news release states.
