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Conflict among primates has been observed by researchers as increasing stress among the group, making mutual grooming very advantageous.

There are benefits to initiating grooming. The one that starts the grooming will in return be groomed themselves, getting the benefit of being cleaned. Research has found that primates that are lower on the social ladder may initiate grooming with a higher ranked primate in order to increase their position. Under times of higher conflict and competition, it has been found that this is less likely to occur. Researchers have suggested that primates may see a need to balance the uses of grooming, swapping between its use a means to increase social standing and the use of grooming to keep oneself clean.

Time primates spend grooming increases with group size, but too large of group sizes can lead to decreased group cohesion because time spent grooming is usually impacted by other factors. Consequently, some of these aspects that affect time spent grooming include ecological, phylogenetic, and life history. For example, the article states, “Cognitive constraints and predation pressure strongly affect group sizes and thereby have an indirect effect on primate grooming time” (Lehmann, 2007). By analyzing past data and studies done about this topic, the authors found that a primate group greater than 40 will face greater ecological problems and, thus, time spent during social grooming is affected.