Human and chimpanzees’ personalities

For many years, experts have discussed the parallels between human and the great ape’s personalities, and now researchers say non-human primates have personalities like people. Common chimpanzees are said to be very intelligent animals and man’s closest living relatives. They can adjust objects like sticks and rocks into simple tools which they use to gather food. Chimpanzees face highly similar social problems as we do, they look for friendships, they want to have partners and have their position within their social circle. Human personality is categorised according to the Big Five dimensions, and studies suggest that it is the same with chimpanzees, but not with orangutans who supposedly display only three: extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
People are trying hard to understand the world around us, we are inclined to search for similarities between the animal kingdom and the human world though we should take them as they are. The researchers wanted to measure how human prejudice impacted the observers’ description of ape behaviour.
More than 200 people observed apes and answered questionnaires about 40 to 50 personality features, and the results showed that contrasts between observers made no difference in the description of ape behaviour. It can, therefore, be concluded that people did not project their own ideas regarding personality onto the chimpanzees and orangutans.