Conditions of Housing, Hormones, and Aggressive Behavior

Abstract

The relationships among environmental variables, the neuroendocrine systems, and aggression are examined, although the resulting correlations are often dif- ficult to interpret. This chapter concentrates to a large extent on those studies that have used rodents and have studied intermale attack behavior. The im- portance of social structure as a variable is explored. Rather arbitrarily, the findings will be examined under the following headings: those studies in which the experimental variable is identified as "crowding" or housing density, those in which "isolation" or "social deprivation" is examined, and those in which the social organization of a group is looked at. The experimental designs can be remarkably similar in these approaches, but the interpretations of the results are often strikingly different.