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Wolf howling is mediated by relationship quality rather than underlying emotional stress.

ABSTRACT: While considerable research has addressed the function of animal vocalizations, the proximate mechanisms driving call production remain surprisingly unclear. Vocalizations may be driven by emotions and the physiological state evoked by changes in the social-ecological environment, or animals may have more control over their vocalizations, using them in flexible ways mediated by the animal's understanding of its surrounding social world. While both explanations are plausible and neither excludes the other, to date no study has attempted to experimentally investigate the influence of both emotional and cognitive factors on animal vocal usage. We aimed to disentangle the relative contribution of both mechanisms by examining howling in captive wolves. Using a separation experiment and by measuring cortisol levels, we specifically investigated whether howling is a physiological stress response to group fragmentation and whether it is driven by social factors, particularly relationship quality. Results showed that relationship quality between the howler and the leaving individual better predicted howling than did the current physiological state. Our findings shed important light on the degree to which animal vocal production can be considered as voluntary.

SUBMITTER: Mazzini F

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3770902 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Wolf howling is mediated by relationship quality rather than underlying emotional stress.

Mazzini Francesco F Townsend Simon W SW Virányi Zsófia Z Range Friederike F

Current biology : CB 20130822 17

While considerable research has addressed the function of animal vocalizations, the proximate mechanisms driving call production remain surprisingly unclear. Vocalizations may be driven by emotions and the physiological state evoked by changes in the social-ecological environment, or animals may have more control over their vocalizations, using them in flexible ways mediated by the animal's understanding of its surrounding social world. While both explanations are plausible and neither excludes ...[more]

PMID: 23973297

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Project description:Extant studies mostly focused on the buffering role of social and external organizational resources and personal mental resources. However, there is no research exploring the moderating role of personal physiological resources (e.g., stress reactivity). The present study is aimed at examining the interactive effect of emotional labor and stress reactivity on job burnout. The present study utilized cortisol content in a 1 cm hair segment as the biomarker of total stress reactivity in one month. The participants were 229 female hospital nurses randomly recruited from city hospitals, China. They self-reported their emotional labor strategies and job burnout syndromes and provided 1 cm hair segments closest to the scalp two weeks later after the survey. Hair cortisol content was determined with high-performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The results revealed that hair cortisol can moderate the associations of surface acting with emotional exhaustion and personal burnout; of deep acting with emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and personal burnout; and of expression of naturally felt emotions with professional inefficacy. In particular, nurses with high cortisol levels not only showed higher emotional exhaustion than those with low cortisol levels under high surface acting but also showed lower emotional exhaustion under low surface acting. A similar situation was true for nurses' emotional exhaustion and depersonalization in the context of deep acting. Nurses with low hair cortisol levels not only showed higher professional inefficacy than those with high hair cortisol levels under low expression of naturally felt emotions but also showed lower professional inefficacy under high expression of naturally felt emotions. Additionally, nurses with high hair cortisol levels showed lower personal burnout than those with low hair cortisol levels under low surface acting or high deep acting. In summary, the interaction pattern between stress reactivity and emotional labor was varied with the nature of emotional labor strategy and job burnout.

Dataset Information

Wolf howling is mediated by relationship quality rather than underlying emotional stress.

Publications

Wolf howling is mediated by relationship quality rather than underlying emotional stress.

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