Publication Date:
2011-12-14
Description:
Whereas human pro-social behavior is often driven by empathic concern for another, it is unclear whether nonprimate mammals experience a similar motivational state. To test for empathically motivated pro-social behavior in rodents, we placed a free rat in an arena with a cagemate trapped in a restrainer. After several sessions, the free rat learned to intentionally and quickly open the restrainer and free the cagemate. Rats did not open empty or object-containing restrainers. They freed cagemates even when social contact was prevented. When liberating a cagemate was pitted against chocolate contained within a second restrainer, rats opened both restrainers and typically shared the chocolate. Thus, rats behave pro-socially in response to a conspecific's distress, providing strong evidence for biological roots of empathically motivated helping behavior.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3760221/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3760221/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Ben-Ami Bartal, Inbal -- Decety, Jean -- Mason, Peggy -- DA022429/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/ -- DA022978/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/ -- R01 DA022978/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/ -- R21 DA022429/DA/NIDA NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2011 Dec 9;334(6061):1427-30. doi: 10.1126/science.1210789.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Psychology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22158823" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Behavior, Animal
;
Cooperative Behavior
;
*Empathy
;
Female
;
Helping Behavior
;
Male
;
Motivation
;
Rats
;
Rats, Sprague-Dawley
;
Restraint, Physical
;
*Social Behavior
;
*Stress, Psychological
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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