Tempted yet cautious: how described odds lower risk aversion in capuchins

Risk-taking decisions are pervasive throughout life, influencing both everyday choices and long-term survival strategies. In this study, to shed light on the evolutionary origins of human risk attitude, we investigated the description-experience gap in 15 tufted capuchin monkeys, Sapajus spp., from the Primate Center of the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of CNR (Rome, Italy) by comparing risky choices under two conditions. In the description condition, subjects received explicit information about the probability of obtaining a larger reward, whereas in the experience condition, they had to infer these probabilities through repeated sampling. Our results reveal that capuchins were generally risk-averse and that risk aversion was more pronounced when probabilities were explicitly described than when they were learned through experience. Moreover, a complex three-way interaction among condition, age and past experience indicated that an individual's risk attitude depended not only on chronological age but also on the cumulative exposure to uncertain outcomes, an effect that emerged solely in the experience condition, in which explicit information was not provided. In addition, sex differences were observed, with males displaying a more pronounced description-experience gap than females. Overall, our findings help clarify the evolutionary tenets of decision-making mechanisms under uncertainty, offering valuable insights into how ecological, demographic and experiential factors jointly shape risk-sensitive decision-making in nonhuman primates and, by extension, humans. (c) 2025 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.