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 …