Unlike humans, monkeys don't assume higher price tag means better quality

A new study has revealed that unlike humans, monkeys aren't fooled by expensive brands, meaning that they don't buy the premise that higher price tag means better quality.

According to the Yale study people consistently tend to confuse the price of a good with its quality. But monkeys do not follow this fact, although they share other irrational behaviour with their human relatives.

Control studies showed that monkeys understood the differences in price between the foods. But when the researchers tested whether monkeys preferred the taste of the higher-priced goods, they were surprised to find that the monkeys didn't show the same bias as humans.

Santos and colleagues think that differences in the response of humans and capuchins could stem from the different experiences that monkeys and people have with markets and how they behave.

Laurie Santos, a psychologist at Yale University, said that for humans, higher price tags often signal that other people like a particular good and their richer social experiences with markets might be the very thing that leads them but not monkeys.

The study is published in open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology.