Christine E Webb

• PhD
• Fellow at Harvard University

In recent years, the presence of stable individual variation in animal behaviour has been corroborated by studies across a wide variety of taxa and research disciplines. Reconciliation, or postconflict affiliation between former opponents, is a behavioural domain in which individual differences have not been systematically studied. Using a long-ter...

Conflict resolution, in its most basic sense, requires movement and change between opposing motivational states. Although scholars and practitioners have long acknowledged this point, research has yet to investigate whether individual differences in the motivation for movement from state-to-state influence conflict resolution processes. Regulatory...

Walking has myriad benefits for the mind, most of which have traditionally been explored and explained at the individual level of analysis. Much less empirical work has examined how walking with a partner might benefit social processes. One such process is conflict resolution—a field of psychology in which movement is inherent not only in recent th...

In contrast to a wealth of human studies, little is known about the ontogeny and consistency of empathy-related capacities in other species. Consolation - post-conflict affiliation from uninvolved bystanders to distressed others - is a suggested marker of empathetic concern in non-human animals. Using longitudinal data comprising nearly a decade of...

Male aggression towards females is a common and often costly occurrence in species that live in bisexual groups. But preferential heterosexual relationships are also known to confer numerous fitness advantages to both sexes—making it of interest to explore how aggression is managed among male–female dyads through strategies like reconciliation (i.e...

Sexual behaviour during tense social situations is extensively documented in various animals. Bonobos, our closest living relatives alongside chimpanzees, habitually perform genital contacts during social tension, which is thought to enhance cooperation and conflict management. While chimpanzees also engage in genital contacts during these contexts...

Early maternal loss can have lasting detrimental effects on primate social development. While many rehabilitation settings provide enriching environments to buffer against such effects in orphans, previous research indicates that young bonobo (Pan paniscus) orphans exhibit striking deficiencies in socio-emotional competence compared to their mother...

The world lost a towering figure when primatologist Frans de Waal passed away on March 14, 2024. Many are aware of his multitude of contributions to the field. His ability to see what animals were actually doing changed how we viewed first primates, then other species. He shared these insights through both traditional scientific outputs, such as jo...

Empathy and its subcomponents are well documented throughout the animal kingdom, indicating the deep evolutionary origins of this socioemotional capacity. A key behavioural marker of empathy is consolation, or unsolicited bystander affiliation directed towards distressed others. Consolation has been observed in our closest living relatives, bonobos...

Empathy is a complex, multi‐dimensional capacity that facilitates the sharing and understanding of others' emotions. As our closest living relatives, bonobos ( Pan paniscus ) and chimpanzees ( P. troglodytes ) provide an opportunity to explore the origins of hominin social cognition, including empathy. Despite certain assumptions that bonobos and c...

Conventional scientific training instructs researchers to avoid empathy with their study subjects in the service of maintaining “objectivity” and warding off “anthropomorphism.” This approach creates an artificial gulf between human and nonhuman worlds, and renders nonhuman beings as radical others without minds or at best, as beings with minds tha...

How do we understand the dignity and value of non-human animals? Leading philosophers, ethnologists and writers contribute to this interdisciplinary and wide-ranging account of animal dignity. With a foreword by world-leading primatologist, Dr. Jane Goodall DBE, essays collected here make the case for applying the concept of dignity beyond its usua...

Researchers have studied non-human primate cognition along different paths, including social cognition, planning and causal knowledge, spatial cognition and memory, and gestural communication, as well as comparative studies with humans. This volume describes how primate cognition is studied in labs, zoos, sanctuaries, and in the field, bringing tog...

Extending Campbell's (1999) staying alive theory (SAT) beyond aggression, we reviewed evidence that females are more self-protective than males. Many commentators provided additional supporting data. Sex differences in life-history adaptations, in the optimal relation between survival and reproduction, and in the mechanisms underlying trade-offs in...

Abnormal behaviour in captive animals is both pervasive and ambiguous. Although individual differences are central to the field of animal welfare, studies on abnormal behaviour predominantly employ quantitative, population-level approaches. For example, whereas previous studies on chimpanzee ( Pan troglodytes ) abnormal behaviour have reported sign...

Empathy—the sharing and understanding of others’ emotions and thoughts—is considered a defining feature of what it means to be human. Although empathy underpins many of our social interactions and is thought to be evolutionarily ancient, its origins remain relatively obscure. Here, this chapter presents research investigating socioemotional develop...

Many male traits are well explained by sexual selection theory as adaptations to mating competition and mate choice, whereas no unifying theory explains traits expressed more in females. Anne Campbell's “staying alive” theory proposed that human females produce stronger self-protective reactions than males to aggressive threats because self-protect...

Empathy, the capacity to share and understand others’ states, is crucial for facilitating enduring social relationships and managing ingroup and outgroup dynamics. Despite being at the center of much scrutiny and debate in human research, the evolutionary foundations of empathy remain relatively opaque. Moreover, inconsistencies remain regarding de...

Reconciliation, or postconflict (PC) affiliation between former opponents, is a widespread conflict management strategy in animal societies, so-named for its relationship repair function. However, another possibility is that PC affiliation reflects a submissive response of victims towards aggressors to limit conflict escalation when the power imbal...

Wild female chimpanzees typically migrate to a neighbouring community at the onset of sexual maturity, a process that can be dangerous and unpredictable. To mitigate the risk of rejection in the new community, immigrants may employ several behavioural strategies. During the integration of two chimpanzee females at Royal Burgers’ Zoo (Arnhem, The Ne...

Same-sex sexual behaviour has been documented across the animal kingdom, and is thought to reflect and enhance dyadic cooperation and tolerance. For instance, same-sex fellatio — the reception of a partner’s penis into another’s mouth — has been reported in several mammalian species other than humans. Although same-sex sexual behaviour is observed...

Despite increasing interest in animal emotions, jealousy has rarely been directly addressed in comparative research, except for studies of human-pet interactions. Jealous behavior emerges when a valuable social bond is threatened by a third-party, prompting aggression or intervention attempts to direct the partner’s attention away from the rival. E...

Much contemporary behavioral science stops short of considering the ethical implications of its own findings. This generates a contradiction between methods and discoveries, and hinders translation between updated scientific evidence for animal sentience and corresponding political and legal changes. A recent and particularly illustrative example i...

Treves et al. (2019) make a convincing case that conservation efforts need to go beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Implementing that vision, however, will require human advocates to represent nonhuman interests. Where will the knowledge of those interests come from? How can humans know what is in the best interest of another animal, a plant, or...

Animal ethics—the field of philosophy concerned with the moral status of animals—is experiencing a momentum unprecedented in its history. Surprisingly, animal behavior science remains on the sidelines, despite producing critical evidence on which many arguments in animal ethics rest. In the present article, we explore the origins of the divide betw...

Comparative thanatology encompasses the study of death-related responses in non-human animals and aspires to elucidate the evolutionary origins of human behavior in the context of death. Many reports have revealed that humans are not the only species affected by the death of group members. Non-human primates in particular show behaviors such as con...

Whereas the feelings of other beings are private and may always remain so, emotions are simultaneously manifested in behavior, physiology, and other observables. Nonetheless, uncertainty about whether emotions can be studied adequately across species has promoted skepticism about their very presence in other parts of the animal kingdom. Studying so...

Des scientifiques expliquent pourquoi ces structures ne peuvent pas satisfaire aux besoins vitaux de leurs animaux sauvages. Entre conditions de détention et de dressage, leur souffrance, mentale et physique est réelle mais encore difficilement mesurable. L’exploitation d’animaux sauvages par les cirques suscite un émoi grandissant dans l’opinion...

Conflict resolution, in its most basic sense, requires movement and change between opposing motivational states. Although scholars and practitioners have long acknowledged this point, research has yet to investigate whether individual differences in the motivation for movement from state-to-state influence conflict resolution processes. Regulatory...

Consistent individual differences in animal behaviour are an increasingly common focus of research across various behavioural and biological sciences. Such ‘animal personalities’ comprise a diverse repertoire of behavioural tendencies, recently expanding to incorporate the social domain. Aggression and peace, hallmarks of many social systems includ...

Recent research suggests that domesticated species - due to artificial selection by humans for specific, preferred behavioral traits - are better than wild animals at responding to visual cues given by humans about the location of hidden food. \Although this seems to be supported by studies on a range of domesticated (including dogs, goats and hors...

Conflict is an integral component of human and other group-living animals’ social nature. But conflicts are often managed and settled through a process called reconciliation, whereby friendly relations between former opponents are restored. In humans, conflict resolution research has focused primarily on forgiveness and less on this broader and per...

The face inversion effect may be defined as the general impairment in recognition that occurs when faces are rotated 180°. This phenomenon seems particularly strong for faces as opposed to other objects and is often used as a marker of a specialized face-processing mechanism. Four brown capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) were tested on their ability t...