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Measuring Dominance in Rats

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Abstract

The social behavior of a colony of 9 male albino rats was recorded over a 5-week period. These observations were followed by a series of paired food competitions which yielded a standard laboratory measure of dominance. Each of these measures was correlated with every other measure. Factor analysis of the resulting correlation matrix revealed a cluster of closely related behaviors, including fighting, boxing, grooming, mounting, and total interactions. Food competition was not significantly related to any of the behavioral indices. These findings do provide a basis for a unidimensional dominance concept of some descriptive breadth and also raise questions concerning the relation between measures obtained via seminaturalistic observation vs those typically used in laboratory studies of dominance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, Juniata College, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, 16652, USA

    David R. Drews & Fred H. Wulczyn

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  1. David R. Drews
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  2. Fred H. Wulczyn
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Additional information

We would like to thank Paul W. Sheppard and Pauline Masters for their help with the factor analysis. We also wish to thank Michael Harrison for his helpful criticisms of an earlier draft.

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Drews, D.R., Wulczyn, F.H. Measuring Dominance in Rats. Psychol Rec 25, 573–581 (1975). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394349

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03394349

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