Social influence on avoidance of dangerous stimuli by rats

Three experiments were conducted to determine whether a naive observer rat would avoid contact with a shock prod after watching a demonstrator rat contact, be shocked by, and defensively bury the prod. We found that observer rats took longer to contact prods that had delivered a shock to and been buried by a demonstrator rat than to contact prods that had not delivered shock and had not been buried. However, observer rats contacted prods buried by an unseen demonstrator rat or by an unseen experimenter with the same latencies as those for prods they had seen deliver shock to and be buried by a demonstrator rat. In large enclosures, subjects took 1–2 h longer to contact buried prods than to contact unburied prods. We conclude that alteration of the physical environment by individuals receiving noxious stimulation can significantly reduce the probability that conspecifics will contact the noxious stimulus. Observational learning per se, however, need not be involved.