Mice in social conflict show rule-observance behavior enhancing long-term benefit

Il-Hwan Choe, Junweon Byun, Ko Keun Kim, Sol Park, Isaac Kim, Jaeseung Jeong and Hee-Sup Shin ()
Additional contact information
Il-Hwan Choe: Center for Cognition and Sociality, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Junweon Byun: Center for Cognition and Sociality, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Ko Keun Kim: Center for Cognition and Sociality, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Sol Park: Center for Cognition and Sociality, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Isaac Kim: Center for Cognition and Sociality, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Jaeseung Jeong: Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Hee-Sup Shin: Center for Cognition and Sociality, Institute for Basic Science (IBS)

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-11

Abstract: Abstract Disorderly resolution of conflict is costly, whereas orderly resolution by consent rules enables quick settlement. However, it is unclear whether non-human animals can make and observe rules to resolve conflict without aggression. Here we report a new behavioral paradigm for mice: a modified two-armed maze that uses wireless electrical brain stimulation as reward. First, the mice were individually operant-trained to initiate and then receive the reward at the signaled arm. Next, two mice were coupled and had to cooperate to initiate reward but then to compete over reward allocation. Mice develop and observe a rule of reward zone allocation that increases the total amount of reward and reward equity between the pair. In the mutual rule-observance behavior, positive reciprocity and tolerance to the other’s violation are also observed. These findings suggest that rodents can learn to make and observe rules to resolve conflict, enhancing long-term benefit and payoff equity.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-01091-5 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-017-01091-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01091-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().