Unlike people, monkeys aren’t fooled by expensive brands

In at least one respect, Capuchin monkeys are smarter than humans - they don't assume a higher price tag means better quality, according to a new Yale study appearing in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology . People consistently tend to confuse the price of a good with its quality. For instance, one study showed that people think a wine labeled with an expensive price tag tastes better than the same wine labeled with a cheaper price tag. In other studies, people thought a painkiller worked better when they paid a higher price for it. The Yale study shows that monkeys don't buy that premise, although they share other irrational behaviors with their human relatives. "We know that capuchin monkeys share a number of our own economic biases. Our previous work has shown that monkeys are loss-averse, irrational when it comes to dealing with risk, and even prone to rationalizing their own decisions, just like humans," said Laurie Santos, a psychologist at Yale University and senior author of the study.