While this research observation might not sound too ground-breaking to some, it actually contradicts previous studies which supposedly showed chimps were selfish creatures by default.
The old view
was that chimps were altruistic when pressured, and wouldn’t share or look out for others unless pressure was applied.
Field observations noted chimps in the wild did make altruistic actions, but research studies largely did not
include this view.
The Emory researchers designed a Prosocial Choice Test to simplify some of the previous approaches, which reportedly produced some unclear results.