The behaviour of laboratory rats in a social learning situation

Abstract

Seven experiments are described which used laboratory rats in a social learning situation. ‘Divisions of labour’ where one animal did most of the ‘work’, developed under a variety of controlled conditions i.e. in groups given different individual training procedures, in groups run in different pieces of apparatus, in those run at ‘survival’ level, in groups which remained in the apparatus until they were no longer hungry, and in groups trained in groups under a number of different experimental procedures. To this extent the observed performance differences may be considered to be a ‘genuine’ phenomenon of experimental ‘social’ organisation. On the other hand, groups differed considerably in their overall performance rates, in the variety of ‘solutions’ which were observed whereby ‘worker’ rats obtained a proportion of the food produced, and on a number of general observations relating to competitive and ‘sexual’ behaviours. Problems are raised which have application for studies of experimental social behaviour and organisation, including that of attempting to assess the ‘conceptual status’ of the main performance measures which were used to compare individual animals' in a ‘social’ situation using a much used experimental psychological technique–namely an operant conditioning task.