FINALLY!!! I have been wanting to do this experiement with chimpanzees for at least 12 years but could never find anyone to fund or ethically support it. I will be so excited if the results are significant. The experiment design is almost exactly what I had planned, too, except I was going to see if chimps could be advertised into preferring less food in a red (or circular or smaller) bowl compared to more food in a blue (or square or larger) bowl, just because the first bowl was associated with sexy lady chimps and alpha male chimps in videos that they'd been shown. I guess the experiment with capuchins is really step one, to see if advertising even works, and then seeing if you can make chimps perform the sort of counterproductive behaviours that humans do under the influence of advertising, in my planned experiment, would be step two.
The experiment design is almost exactly what I had planned, too, except I was going to see if chimps could be advertised into preferring less food in a red (or circular or smaller) bowl compared to more food in a blue (or square or larger) bowl, just because the first bowl was associated with sexy lady chimps and alpha male chimps in videos that they'd been shown. I guess the experiment with capuchins is really step one, to see if advertising even works, and then seeing if you can make chimps perform the sort of counterproductive behaviours that humans do under the influence of advertising, in my planned experiment, would be step two.