Some Effects of Conditioning on Social Dominance and Subordination in Inbred Strains of Mice

Ginsburg, Benson E.; Allee, W. C.

doi:10.1086/physzool.15.4.30151662

Cited by 382 publications

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“…Table 1 shows that in the aggression and food tests, the superiority of the DBA/8 strain is nearly complete, while in the tube test the A strain attains nearly complete dominance. This one-sidedness supports previous results indicating that each of the measures is highly sensitive to strain differences, and is congruent with strain difference findings reported by Ginsburg & Allee (1942), Scott (1942), and Fredericson & Birnbaum (1954), all using mice in studies of fighting and aggression. While not surprising, such a finding does highlight the potential usefulness of these measures for research in behavior genetics.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

Social dominance in the mouse

1966

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Two inbred strains of mice were opposed in measures of tube-dominanc e, food-dominanc e, and aggression, using matched pairs of individual opponents. There were stable strain differences on all three measures, and Ss within strains were highly similar to each other in performance. Results on the food-dominance and aggression measures were concordant, while performance on the tube-dominance test was negatively related to the other two measures.While uncontrolled observation of social dominance in infrahuman animals has long been reported, there has been relatively little experimental study. In large part this has been due to the absence of sensitive and efficient measuring techniques. The present study was concerned with an examination ofarelativelynewmeasure, "tube-dominance," in relation to two other tests of social behavior. Thus, three different behavioral measures were employed: (a) a test in which hungry Ss must push against each other in a narrow tube in order to reach food, (b) a test opposing hungry Ss in an arena containing a food aperture large enough for only one S at a time to eat, (c) a test of spontaneous fighting behavior. All three tests are standardized,easytoadminister, and employ objective behavioral measures. Each measure is believed on the basis of previous research to possess at least minimally adequate psychometric properties, and has been shown to possess sensitivity to behavioral differences between inbred strains of mice.The tube-dominance test was shown in a previous study (Lindzey, Winston, & Manosevitz, 1961) to be unusually reliable and to result in very stable transitive relationships both between individual Ss within groups and between different inbred strains of mice. One means of adding to our understanding of the psychological significance of the tube-dominance measure is to observe its relation to other measures of social behavior. More specifically, in the present study we were concerned with (1) the possibility that the three tests employed might be viewed as measures of the same general trait; (2) to observe the extent to which the genetically homogeneous Ss within inbred strains would perform in the same way on these measures; and (3) to determine for each measure the stability in performance over repeated trials between individual sets of opponents. Method Twenty-six male Ss were employed, organized into 13 matched pairs that remained the same for all three phases of testing. One member of each pair was from strain A, the other from strain DBA/8. Pairs were matched on the basis of age. Both strains have been inbred for more than 30 generations of brother-sister mating. All Ss were weaned and housed with same-sex littermates at 23 days of age, individually housed in metal cages at approximately 42 days, and were 75-100 days of age at the beginning of the experiment.The aggression test is a measure of spontaneous fighting betwe"n pairs of mice. The present apparatus and testing procedure is a Psychon. Sci., 1966, Vol. 5 (11) modification of that described by Fredericson (1...

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 90%

Social dominance in the mouse

1966

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“…Social hierarchy in cages of male mice may be unstable and affected by aggressive interactions (Ginsburg and Allee, 1975;Miczek, et al, 2001;Wimer and Fuller, 1966). The present study allowed the assessment of the stability of the dominance order within a cage by comparing the results of the dominancy tests conducted at two time points: before and after SDR.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This model of social stress was developed based on the observations indicating that group-housed male mice tend to form social hierarchies. These hierarchies usually consist of a dominant, co-dominant and subordinate cage mates (Ginsburg & Allee, 1975). In SDR, these naturally occurring social hierarchies are repeatedly disrupted by an aggressive intruder mouse Stark et al, 2001).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, previous experience in defeat increased the likelihood of mice to develop a strong splenic response following social stress (Avitsur et al, 2003b). Since early experience in defeat and increased tendency to exhibit submissive responses when attacked are characteristics of subordinate social status (Ginsburg and Allee, 1975), it was suggested that social status affected the severity of the splenic response to SDR. The objective of the present study was to characterize the relationship between social status and the splenic response to SDR.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Subordinate social status modulates the vulnerability to the immunological effects of social stress

Avitsur¹,

Kinsey²,

Bidor³

et al. 2007

Psychoneuroendocrinology

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SummarySocial stress has long been known to affect physical and psychological health in humans and a variety of animal species. In mice, disruption of the social hierarchy (social disruption, SDR) resulted in significant changes in the phenotype and function of immune cells taken from the spleen. Interestingly, there were considerable individual differences in the development of this splenic response to SDR. Studies have suggested that these individual differences were mediated by behavioral factors such as social hierarchy. To test this hypothesis, social status within cages of male mice was identified before and after SDR. Results showed that in the majority of the cages social order was stable over time. In addition, examination of the association between social status and splenic function showed that the splenic response to SDR in subordinate mice was significantly augmented compared to dominants. This relationship between subordinate social status and the splenic response to social stress was more notable in cages with stable social hierarchies. To sum up, the current study showed a role for socio-behavioral factors in determining the response to stress. This study further demonstrated the complexity of factors playing a role in mediating the physiological response to social stress resulting in considerable individual differences in the response to stress.

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“…The advantage in resource conflict given to more formidable competitors has been found in species as distantly related as the sea anemone (Brace & Pavey, 1978), amphipods (Connell, 1963), beetles (Eberhard, 1979), African buffalo (Sinclair, 1977), crayfish (Hazlett, Rubenstein & Ritschoff, 1975), field crickets (Hofmann & Schildberger, 2001), green sunfish (Hale, 1956), mice (Ginsberg & Allee, 1942), golden hamsters (Marques & Valenstein, 1977), and New Forest ponies (Tyler, 1972). A particularly dramatic example was found by Petrie (1984) who studied territory size in the moorhen (Gallinula chloropus) and found that relative male weight was a RHP with reference to others (for a review of the non-primate animal literature see Huntingford and Turner, 1987, for primate examples see Smuts et al, 1987).…”

Section: Design Of Animal Conflict and Selection Pressures In The Asymentioning

confidence: 99%

Applying adaptationism to human anger: The recalibrational theory.

Sell¹

2011

Human Aggression and Violence: Causes, Manifestations, and Consequences.

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In the late 1960s and early 1970s, evolutionary biology underwent a scientific revolution in which poorly defined models of evolutionary change were replaced with a theoretically rigorous program of research that integrated the major findings of evolutionary biology, animal behavior, and genetics. This integration included a method, known as the adaptationist program, for identifying and describing design in organisms, a method that matches the engineering requirements inherent in adaptive problems to features in the organism that are designed to solve those problems.In this chapter, I apply the methods of the adaptationist program to human anger. The resultant theory, called the recalibrational theory, states that anger is the output of a cognitive mechanism designed by natural selection to negotiate conflicts of interest. The causes of anger, the behavior it produces, the factors that mitigate it, and its effects on physiology, perception, and cognition can be explained by reference to this adaptive function.In brief, the recalibrational theory states that anger is a system designed by natural selection to recalibrate the weight another individual places on the angry person's interests so that they become less likely to impose costs or deny benefits to the angry individual. Anger deploys two main strategies to convince the target to treat the angry individual better: (a) toward those with

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Some Effects of Conditioning on Social Dominance and Subordination in Inbred Strains of Mice

Cited by 382 publications

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Social dominance in the mouse

Social dominance in the mouse

Subordinate social status modulates the vulnerability to the immunological effects of social stress

Applying adaptationism to human anger: The recalibrational theory.

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