The influence of conspecific distress responses on the lever choice behavior in the rat

Abstract

We examined whether distress responses of rats would be a negative reinforcer or not. In Experiment 1, two rats were placed in adjacent compartments. One rat was reinforced by a food pellet for pressing either of two levers. One of the levers produced food while the other produced food plus electric shock (0.5-2.0 mA) to the other rat. All rats preferred the former lever. In addition, this tendency was more prominent in rats that had experienced shock previously than those without experience. In Experiment 2, one lever produced food while the other produced food plus auditory stimuli, a recorded distress scream (65 dB) or a pure tone (3 kHz, 65 dB). Rats that chose between food and food plus another rat's scream avoided being exposed to the scream. Rats that chose between food and food plus the pure tone chose the two levers equally. These results suggest that negative emotional responses of the conspecifics could be a negative reinforcer.