Rats play tit-for-tat instead of integrating social experience over multiple interactions.

ABSTRACT: Theoretical models of cooperation typically assume that agents use simple rules based on last encounters, such as 'tit-for-tat', to reciprocate help. By contrast, empiricists generally suppose that animals integrate multiple experiences over longer timespans. Here, we compared these two alternative hypotheses by exposing Norway rats to partners that cooperated on three consecutive days but failed to cooperate on the fourth day, and to partners that did the exact opposite. In additional controls, focal rats experienced cooperating and defecting partners only once. In a bar-pulling setup, focal rats based their decision to provide partners with food on last encounters instead of overall cooperation levels. To check whether this might be owing to a lack of memory capacity, we tested whether r

SUBMITTER: Schweinfurth MK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7003459 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature