Some social factors relevant to the stress-reducing effect of fighting in rats

Abstract

The aim of this experiment was to study some intrinsic factors relevant to the stress-reducing effect of fighting. Two-factorial design was employed: one factor was to concern the nature of reactive feedback that came from each target animal, and another to concern the nature of social contact (visual and/or bodily). The main results were as follows:(i) the animals shocked together and fought with each other tended to show less severe gastric lesions than both of those animals that received the same amount of shock either solitarily or under the condition that they were permitted to attack their target animals exposed to no shock, and (ii) the stressreducing effect of fighting was observed only when animals were allowed to make bodily contact with their target animals. These results indicates that the mere release of aggression is not sufficient to reduce the degree of gastric lesions, but some social elements plays an important role in the stress-reducing effect of fighting.