Social information use in threat perception: Social buffering, contagion and facilitation of alarm responses

Abstract

Group living animals can use the behavior of others as cues for the presence of threat in the environment and adjust their behavior accordingly. Therefore, different social phenomena that modulate the response to threat, such as social buffering, social transmission (contagion), and facilitation of alarm responses can be seen as different manifestations of social information use in threat detection. Thus, social phenomena that are functionally antagonistic, such as social buffering and social transmission of fear, may rely on shared neurobehavioral mechanisms related to the use of social information in decision-making about the presence of threat in the environment. Here, we propose a unifying conceptual framework for the study of social information use in threat perception based on signal detection theory.