Abstract
The structure and reliability of social dominance relationships among four male and four female juvenile guinea pigs were assessed by a pairwise testing procedure. Two series of dominance tests, each requiring 7 days, were separated by an 8-day interval. The guinea pigs were housed individually for the duration of the experiment. Dominance hierarchies were determined by ranking the animals according to the total number of opponents they dominated in each test series. The hierarchies emerging from each series of tests were linear. Females were, with one exception, dominant over males. Reliability of the dominance structure was indexed by a high rank-order correlation between the hierarchies measured in each session.
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Clark, D. L., & Dillon, J. E. Evaluation of the water incentive method of social dominance measurement in primates. Folia Primatologica, 1973, in press.
Rood, J.P. Ecological and behavioral comparisons of three genera of Argentine cavies. Animal Behavior Monographs, 1972, 5, Part I.
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This paper is sponsered by James E. King, who takes full editorial responsibility for it.
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Bates, P.L., Langenes, D.J. & Clark, D.L. Reliability of social dominance in guinea pigs. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 2, 229–230 (1973). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329255
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329255