Individuals value information that improves decision making.
When social interactions complicate the decision process, acquiring information about others should be particularly valuable.
In primate societies, kinship, dominance, and reproductive status regulate social interactions
and should therefore systematically influence the value of social information...
Male rhesus macaques sacrificed fluid for the opportunity to view female perinea and the faces of high-status monkeys
but required fluid overpayment to view the faces of low-status monkeys...
These data demonstrate that visual orienting decisions reflect the specific social content of visual information
and provide the first experimental evidence that monkeys spontaneously discriminate images of others
based on social status, Robert Deaner et al., current-biology.com, 27.01.05