CONDITIONED SUPPRESSION AS A SENSITIVE BASELINE FOR SOCIAL FACILITATION¹

Abstract

The key pecking of pigeons maintained on a variable-interval schedule of food reinforcement was suppressed during occasional presentations of a warning stimulus paired with electric shock. On alternate sessions, a co-actor pigeon was visible in an adjoining chamber where it emitted the same food-reinforced key peck during the warning stimulus that signalled shock for the subject. With no shock and at low shock intensities, where the subject's responding was not suppressed or suppressed only slightly, the co-actor had little effect. At the higher shock intensities, where the subject's responding was reduced by at least 40%, the response rate during the warning stimulus was consistently higher when the co-actor was present. One explanation of these results assumes a special relationship between social stimuli and aversive stimuli in which the presence of another animal reduces emotional reactions and thereby allows operant responses to increase. This was not the case here because the mere presence of the co-actor did not maintain social facilitation. Rather, the present results, taken in conjunction with previous findings, suggest that changes in social and non-social variables which affect the rate of food-reinforced responding may produce proportionately larger changes in responding when that responding is suppressed by aversive stimulation than when it is not.

AUDIT RESPONSES: RESPONSES MAINTAINED BY ACCESS TO EXISTING SELF OR COACTOR SCORES DURING NON‐SOCIAL, PARALLEL WORK, AND COOPERATION PROCEDURES1

“…Social facilitation, a well-known social stimulus effect, also involves increases in behavior during parallel work procedures (see review by Zajonc, 1965). Recent studies have shown that social facilitation effects depend upon the coactor doing something: the mere presence of another individual has little effect (e.g., Hake and Laws, 1967;Hake, Powell, and Olsen, 1969). In Experiment I, the behavior of the coactor was accessible through the coactor's score on the coactor counter, as well as through visual and auditory observation of the coactor, the latter being the usual procedure in social facilitation studies.…”

“…The procedure in which the coactor's score was not accessible was similar to that which had been effective in most studies of social stimulus effects. In social facilitation studies, for instance, the presence of a non-behaving individual has typically had little effect, but the presence of a coactor engaged in the same task has typically been sufficient to produce the social facilitation effect (e.g., Hake and Laws, 1967;Hake et al, 1969).…”

A CLASSIFICATION AND REVIEW OF COOPERATION PROCEDURES1

“…For example, social facilitation (an increase in a behavior of one individual as a result of the presence of another individual) is, by definition, a basic social emergent. Studies concerned with the social facilitation of feeding, the response most frequently studied, have shown that the increase in behavior cannot be attributed to non-social mechanical stimuli, such as the activation of the co-actor's food tray (e.g., Hake and Laws, 1967;Hake, Powell, and Olsen, 1969).…”

Social modeling of conditioned fear in mice by non-fearful conspecifics

“…In the presence of non-fearful conspecifics, observers exhibit a significant decrease (social buffering) of fear-motivated behavior, as seen in cats [17, 26], rats [3, 7] and pigeons [14, 15]. On the other hand, in the presence of littermates experiencing pain, observers exhibit pain hypersensitivity [24].…”