The Effect of Chronic Estrogen Administration on Same-Sex Social Behavior and Central Oxytocin Levels in Prairie Voles (Microtus ochrogaster)

The purpose of our study is to investigate the effects of chronic estrogen administration on same-sex interactions during exposure to a social stressor and on oxytocin (OT) levels in prairie voles (Microtus orchrogaster). Estrogen and OT are two hormones known to be involved with social behavior and stress. Estogen is involved in the transcription of OT and its receptor. Because of this, it is generally thought that estrogen upregulates OT, but evidence to support this assumption is weak. While estrogen has been shown to either increase or decrease stress, OT has been shown to have stress-dampening properties. The goal of our experiment is to determine how estrogen affects OT levels as well as behavior in a social stressor in the voles. In addition, estrogen is required for many opposite-sex interactions, but little is known about its influence on same-sex interactions. We hypothesized that prairie voles receiving chronic estrogen injections would show an increase in OT levels in the brain and alter behavior in response to a social stressor called the resident-intruder test. To test this hypothesis, 73 female prairie voles were ovariectomized and then administered daily injections of estrogen (0.05 ¿g in peanut oil, s.c.) or vehicle for 8 days. On the final day of injections, half of the voles were given the resident-intruder test, a stressful 5 min interaction with a same-sex stranger. Their behavior was video-recorded. These animals were then sacrificed either 10 minutes or 60 minutes after the conclusion of the test. Half of the animals (no stress group) were not given the resident-intruder test. After sacrifice, trunk blood and brains were collected from the animals. Videos of the resident-intruder tests were analyzed for pro-social and aggressive behavior. Density of OT-activated neurons in the brain was measured via pixel count using immunohistochemistry. No differences were found in pro-social behavior (focal sniffing, p = 0.242; focal initiated sniffing p = 0.142; focal initiated sniffing/focal sniffing, p = 0.884) or aggressive behavior (total time fighting, p= 0.763; number of fights, p= 0.148; number of strikes, p = 0.714). No differences were found in activation of OT neurons in the brain, neither in the anterior paraventricular nucleus (PVN) (pixel count p= 0.358; % area that contains pixelated neurons p = 0.443) nor in the medial PVN (pixel count p= 0.999; % area that contains pixelated neurons p = 0.916). These results suggest that estrogen most likely does not directly upregulate OT and that estrogen does not alter behavior in stressful social interactions with a same-sex stranger. Estrogen may prepare the animal to respond to OT, instead of increasing the production of the peptide itself, suggesting that we need to shift the framework in which we consider estrogen and OT interactions.

Explicit vs implicit affiliation motives predict different social behavior in sports competition

Objectives The present study investigated the predictive value of the explicit and implicit affiliation motive for social behavior in sport competitions. From an information processing perspective, an explicit motive is linked to verbal cues and respondent behavior. The implicit motive in turn is linked to nonverbal stimuli and operant behavior (McClelland, Koestner, & Weinberger, 1989; Schultheiss, 2008). Both respondent affiliative behavior (e.g., verbal interactions with teammates) and operant nonverbal social behavior (e.g., pleasant to opponents) can be observed in racquet sports team competitions. Design & Methods Fifty-two male racquet sportsmen completed the Personality Research Form (explicit affiliation motive) and the Operant Motive Test (implicit affiliation motive). Motive measures were used to predict social behavior during competitions using multiple regression analyses. To this aim real competitive matches were videotaped and analyzed. Results Results show that the explicit affiliation motive is associated with time spent in verbal team contact. The implicit affiliation motive, by contrast, is linked to pleasant nonverbal behavior shown toward opponents. Conclusions Findings suggest that implicit and explicit affiliation motives predict different kinds of social behavior in sports competition respectively. Indirect motive measures may be of additional predictive value for different behavior in real sports settings.

SOCIAL, EMOTIONAL, COGNITIVE, AND PHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF ELECTRONIC SOCIAL BEHAVIOR

There has been very little research that has studied the capacities that can be fostered to mitigate the risk for involvement in electronic bullying or victimization and almost no research examining positive electronic behavior. The primary goal of this dissertation was to use the General Aggression Model and Anxious Apprehension Model of Trauma to explore the underlying cognitive, emotional, and self-regulation processes that are related to electronic bullying, victimization, and prosocial behavior. In Study 1, we explored several potential interpretations of the General Aggression Model that would accurately describe the relationship that electronic self-conscious appraisal, cognitive reappraisal, and activational control may have with electronic bullying and victimization. In Study 2, we used the Anxious Apprehension Model of Trauma to explore rejection cognitions as the mediator of the relationships among emotionality (emotionality, shame, state emotion responses, and physiological arousal) and electronic bullying and victimization using structural equation modelling. In addition, we explored the role of rejection cognitions in mediating the relationship of moral disengagement with electronic bullying. In Study 3, we examined predictors of electronic prosocial behavior, such as bullying, victimization, time online, electronic proficiency, electronic self-conscious appraisals, emotionality, and self-regulation. All three studies supported the General Aggression Model as a framework to guide the study of electronic behavior, and suggest the importance of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral means of regulation in shaping electronic behavior. In addition, each study has implications for the development of high quality electronic bullying prevention and intervention research.

Television and social behavior; reports and papers.

Includes bibliographies

Agreement between mothers' and fathers' beliefs and child rearing strategies in relation to the child's social behavior

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Agreement between mothers' and fathers' beliefs and child rearing strategies in relation to the child's social behavior

Thèse numérisée par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Social Cognition and Behavior in Relationship Context

Social information processing (SIP; Crick & Dodge, 1994) and social-cognitive learning theories have been often used to understand children’s problem behaviors, such as aggression. According to these theories, children’s thinking guides their subsequent behaviors. Although most of us agree that social behavior and underlying thought processes are context-dependent, personality and social development researchers have usually engaged in searching for stable patterns of dispositions and behaviors, ignoring (or treating as error) the variance across different situations and relationship types. This, however, can result in erroneous conclusions and question the interpretation of previous findings. Four studies were conducted to explore the influence of relationship context on children’s social-cognitive evaluations and behavior. Samples were fourth to sixth graders from Estonia and Finland. Social cognitions were assessed by presenting children with hypothetical vignettes where the previously identified relationship partner’s behavior had a negative consequence for the child (Studies I, II, and IV), followed by questions measuring different social-cognitive processes (e.g., hostile attributions, behavioral strategies, outcome expectations and self-efficacy beliefs for aggression). In addition, in Studies II and IV, children provided information about their behavior within a specific relationship context. In Study III, an affective priming paradigm was employed where participants were presented with a short display of photographs of children’s liked and disliked classmates, and unknown peers. The results of this thesis suggest that children’s thinking and behavior are largely influenced by the affective valence of the relationship. Moreover, cognitions guide behavior within the relationship. The current findings offer a fruitful avenue for studying the heterogeneity of peer interactions.

Rhythmic behavior of social insects from single to multibody

Revealing the evolution of well-organized social behavior requires understanding a mechanism by which collective behavior is produced. A well-organized group may be produced by two possible mechanisms, namely, a central control and a distributed control. In the second case, local interactions between interchangeable components function at the bottom of the collective behavior. We focused on a simple behavior of an individual ant and analyzed the interactions between a pair of ants. In an experimental set-up, we placed the workers in a hemisphere without a nest, food, and a queen, and recorded their trajectories. The temporal pattern of velocity of each ant was obtained. From this bottom-up approach, we found the characteristic behavior of a single worker and a pair of workers as follows: (1) Activity of each individual has a rhythmic component. (2) Interactions between a pair of individuals result in two types of coupling, namely the anti-phase and the in-phase coupling. The direct physical contacts between the pair of workers might cause a phase shift of the rhythmic components in individual ants. We also build up a simple model based on the coupled oscillators toward the understanding of the whole colony behavior.

Social instability promotes hormone-behavior associated patterns in a cichlid fish

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Long-term social recognition memory in adult male rats: factor analysis of the social and non-social behaviors

A modified version of the intruder-resident paradigm was used to investigate if social recognition memory lasts at least 24 h. One hundred and forty-six adult male Wistar rats were used. Independent groups of rats were exposed to an intruder for 0.083, 0.5, 2, 24, or 168 h and tested 24 h after the first encounter with the familiar or a different conspecific. Factor analysis was employed to identify associations between behaviors and treatments. Resident rats exhibited a 24-h social recognition memory, as indicated by a 3- to 5-fold decrease in social behaviors in the second encounter with the same conspecific compared to those observed for a different conspecific, when the duration of the first encounter was 2 h or longer. It was possible to distinguish between two different categories of social behaviors and their expression depended on the duration of the first encounter. Sniffing the anogenital area (49.9% of the social behaviors), sniffing the body (17.9%), sniffing the head (3%), and following the conspecific (3.1%), exhibited mostly by resident rats, characterized social investigation and revealed long-term social recognition memory. However, dominance (23.8%) and mild aggression (2.3%), exhibited by both resident and intruders, characterized social agonistic behaviors and were not affected by memory. Differently, sniffing the environment (76.8% of the non-social behaviors) and rearing (14.3%), both exhibited mostly by adult intruder rats, characterized non-social behaviors. Together, these results show that social recognition memory in rats may last at least 24 h after a 2-h or longer exposure to the conspecific.