Because chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) are an endangered species, all African countries in which the animals live have forbidden their capture and trade as food or pets. Despite this, there are an estimated 300 chimps in private households and zoos in the United States. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service makes this possible by double-listing chimpanzees on the endangered species list: While wild-born chimps are considered endangered, captive-born individuals are only listed as threatened, which allows them to be traded for use as pets, "actors" in the entertainment industry, and test subjects for biomedical research.
(A young chimpanzee, Pan troglodytes. They may look cute and innocent when they are young, but can grow up to be quite fierce.)
In the wild, chimpanzee populations are threatened by habitat destruction, disease, and hunting. A variety of conservation programs are aimed at combating these issues, but many researchers feel that their efforts are undermined by the use of chimps in the entertainment industry. Specifically, they feel that use of chimpanzees in movies, advertisements, and other visual media sends the message not only that these animals have safe and healthy wild populations, but also that it is appropriate to consider them as pets. This idea is known as the "distortion hypothesis," since it suggests that entertainment chimpanzees distort public perceptions. Those who are in favor of continuing to use chimpanzees in the media counter these arguments with the "familiarity hypothesis," the idea that any chimpanzee imagery is helpful to conservation efforts since it keeps the animals in the public consciousness and makes people see chimps in a favorable light.
To investigate which of these hypotheses has more support, researchers from Duke University developed a faux marketing study that appeared to participants as though it was investigating their attitudes about 4 non-chimpanzee-related TV commercials. In reality, it was designed to determine participants' responses to a chimpanzee-related test stimulus embedded in the video containing the other 4 clips. The actual test stimulus was 1 of 3 things: a public service announcement about chimpanzees delivered by the Jane Goodall Institute (the "PSA" treatment); a baseline description of chimpanzee biology (the "baseline" treatment); or a series of three commercials featuring chimpanzees (the "entertainment" treatment).
(An early example of a chimp "actor." One of the most common chimpanzee entertainment motifs is chimps dressed as humans, and/or located in anthropogenic environments.)
Once participants had viewed the video, they were asked to complete a survey that addressed attitudes towards, and knowledge of, chimpanzees, focusing on 3 major topics: the suitability of chimps as pets, the animals' presence in the media, and facts about their survival in the wild. At the end of the study, participants--who were paid $10 for their time--were given an opportunity to use their paycheck to purchase any of the items featured in the commercials, or to donate money to a conservation organization (either the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force, which works with chimpanzees, or the American Red Cross).
This entire study design was repeated for a second round of experimentation in which the survey was reformatted and reworded, allowing the researchers to gain more information about the participants--including whether they had guessed the purpose of the study. An extra question was added in which the participants were asked to indicate how they would split a hypothetical $50 donation between the American Red Cross and the World Wildlife Fund; then, during the actual donation period, participants could use their study participation paycheck either to purchase Coca-Cola (which was featured in one of the non-chimp commercials) or to contribute to the African Wildlife Foundation.
Across both rounds of the experiment, participants in the PSA treatment were more likely to indicate that chimpanzees were not suitable as pets. These individuals were also more likely to correctly identify wild chimpanzee populations as endangered. In the first round of the experiments, 10 people donated money to charities. Only 3 of these individuals chose to give to the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force--and all 3 were in the PSA treatment. Similar results were recorded during the second round of treatment. PSA participants were most generous in their hypothetical contributions to the WWF; individuals in the baseline treatment came next, and those in the entertainment treatment were least likely to support the environmental group. Among people who donated actual money from their participation paychecks, individuals in the public service announcement treatment were twice as likely to give money, and gave twice as much when they did.
(A more realistic, but less common, view of chimps--wild animals that are capable of doing severe damage to humans.)
These results offer strong support for the distortion hypothesis, and none for the familiarity hypothesis. Over a third of individuals exposed to the entertainment treatment felt that private citizens should have the right to own a chimp as a pet; only 10% of people in the other 2 treatments shared this sentiment. Survey results indicated that most viewers did not realize that entertainment chimps are those who are young and easily manipulated--or that these animals could grow up to be quite dangerous. Another interesting finding of the surveys was that viewers favor commercials featuring music, but actively dislike commercials featuring chimps in human situations. This, in combination with concerns over animal welfare and the negative conservation implications of using entertainment chimpanzees, suggests that marketing efforts should steer clear of ape-related advertisements.
On a broader scale, the study indicates that the public is easily swayed by the subtle undertones of chimpanzee imagery. This is despite the fact that scientists and conservationists have actively broadcasted the message that chimpanzees are endangered and deserve protection. Thus, it is important to carefully consider the content of entertainment images and assess whether they will have negative impacts on important policy issues. Perhaps conservationists might even use the pliability of their audience to their advantage, designing more effective pro-biodiversity propaganda.
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For supplementary images associated with this post, please visit the Anthrophysis pin board at Pinterest.
Schroepfer, K.K., Rosati, A.G., Chartrand, T., and Hare, B. 2011. Use of "entertainment" chimpanzees in commercials distorts public perception regarding their conservation status. PLoS ONE 6(10):e26048.
Thanks to the following websites for providing the images used in this post:
http://www.wallpaperweb.org/wallpaper/animals/vociferous-chimpanzee_1536...
http://www.popbitch.com/home/2009/08/04/chimpanzee-tuesday/http://damewallis.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/you-better-work-account-execu...
The total number of participants was 165 (n = 165) and presumably approximately a third of these were assigned to each experiment, though I couldn't find the specific numbers anywhere, only the standard deviations, means, F-test comparisons etc. Participants either watched :-
1) a chimpanzee conservation commercial
2) commercials containing‘‘entertainment’’ chimpanzees or
3) control footage of the natural behavior of wild chimpanzees.
'Results from a post viewing questionnaire reveal that participants who watched the conservation message understood that chimpanzees were endangered and unsuitable as pets at higher levels than those viewing the control footage of naturally behaving wild chimpanzees. Meanwhile participants watching commercials with entertainment chimpanzees showed a decrease in understanding relative to those watching the control footage.'
Sorry, but so what? What else would anyone expect?
The experiment then goes on to describe how it also tested 2 hypotheses, the 'distortion hypothesis' and the 'familiarity hypothesis' which predict different effects concerning how viewing of entertainment chimpanzees influence public perceptions of chimpanzees more generally.
The distortion hypothesis suggests that the regular appearance of trained chimpanzees in commercials and other forms of media lead the public to believe chimpanzees are not endangered and potentially make appropriate pets.
‘The familiarity hypothesis suggests that any presentation of chimpanzees helps conservation efforts, even when presented in unnatural or human-like situations. Indeed research does suggest that familiarity is a factor that can influence the public’s support of conservation organizations, along with personal reputation, biophilia, personal income, knowledge and interests. Moreover, people’s donation preferences are also positively correlated with the degree to which a species is similar to humans with chimpanzees having a high baseline likability index because of their close relationship to humans'.
‘All participants were then given a chance to donate a portion of their participation payment to a conservation organization. The distortion hypothesis predicts that relative to a baseline condition those watching a conservation message will have more accurate knowledge and donate more to conservation while entertainment chimpanzee commercials will have a negative impact. The familiarity hypothesis predicts that relative to a baseline both the conservation and the entertainment chimpanzee commercials will have a positive effect.’
The experiment then identified an accidental skew in the random allocation of participants to the three experiments. Apparently significantly more females and significantly more college graduates were assigned to the entertainment chimp group. Not only that, but 3 participants correctly identified the purpose of the research and their results were removed from the experiment. My guess is that these 3 participants were also in the entertainment chimps group.
So we have the all important entertainment chimp group (for this experiment) presumably with approximately 50 to 55 participants, which has significantly more women and significantly more college graduates than the other groups both of which could cause significant knowledge and personal income and interest effects (see above) in this experiment and 3 of its participants results may also have been removed, because they correctly identified the purpose of the experiment.
The F-test then compares the altruistic donations of the three groups and found no significant difference between them. They did however observe that the entertainment chimp group donated the least of their experimental earnings to a conservation charity.
Again, I have to ask, so what? What else would you expect? People who were not informed about chimp conservation issues made uninformed decisions about donating to chimp conservation charities and the previously, self informed participants were probably removed.
There was no significant difference between the groups altruistic donations to chimps overall but there was a significant difference in their perceptions of the suitability of keeping chimps as pets, even though the group with this perception was not representative of the population in general, more women and more college graduates.
Significantly more women and more college graduates in a group would automatically imply to me an increase in the liklihood of them being more likely to view a chimp as a potential pet, regardless of which commercial they watched. So, in my opinion the experiment was probably flawed. I think that they should have randomly reassigned the groups and rerun the experiment once they had identified the accidental women and college graduate skews in the entertainment chimp group.