There may be trouble ahead

Have you ever had the feeling that there's trouble brewing ahead? Perhaps you've noticed that the atmosphere in the pub has changed slightly and you just know that someone's about to start a fight. Maybe you go to nice places where this sort of thing doesn't happen.

In any case, usually before there is any actual trouble, there is an opportunity to engage in some interpersonal emotional regulation to try to calm things down a bit. New research suggests that this might not be so special to humans (although we can still lay claim as kings of kicking off for no reason in the pub) as capuchin monkeys have been seen grooming each other with greater frequency just before trouble is expected.

Grooming behaviour has important roles in monkey societies and, as the New Scientist article explains, less dominant males use this as means of asking permission to share food in advance. It might be a bit of a push to immediately assume that this is emotional regulation behaviour as there's always a danger of projecting human behaviours on to animals to explain their actions. An opposing view in the short article highlights that the monkeys may be grooming each other to alleviate their own anxiety about predicted trouble rather than to change other's feelings.

I don't really mind whose view may be correct because it's still quite exciting that animals may be engaging in emotional regulation.

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