Prior experience with behavioral control over stress facilitates social dominance.

ABSTRACT: Dominance status has extensive effects on physical and mental health, and an individual's relative position can be shaped by experiential factors. A variety of considerations suggest that the experience of behavioral control over stressors should produce winning in dominance tests and that winning should blunt the impact of later stressors, as does prior control. To investigate the interplay between competitive success and stressor control, we first examined the impact of stressor controllability on subsequent performance in a warm spot competition test modified for rats. Prior experience of controllable, but not physically identical uncontrollable, stress increased later effortful behavior and occupation of the warm spot. Controllable stress subjects consistently ranked higher than did un

SUBMITTER: Coleman PT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10783635 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature