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Ontogenetic & evolutionary roots of social competence and their implications for wellbeing

个体发生

基本信息

批准号：
BB/X00631X/1
负责人：
Manon Schweinfurth
金额：
$ 105.45万
依托单位：
University of St Andrews
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2023
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2023 至无数据
项目状态：
未结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FX00631X%2F1
关键词：
Ontogenetic evolutionary roots social competence

项目摘要

Like many other animals, humans are social beings and have a great desire to socialise, exemplified in the Covid-19 pandemic. Being alone with limited social connections can impact our mental and physical health. At the same time, interacting with others can cause troubles. From early on, we thus need to learn how to navigate through a complex social environment. One essential foundational skill to interact adequately with others is reciprocity, i.e., interacting and cooperating with nice and avoiding exploitative partners. Given the important role social competence plays in our life, it is surprising that it is unclear how this has emerged and can be maintained.The goal of this project is to elucidate the origins of social competence and its impact on wellbeing. Recent advances based on my work have turned rats into an ideal study subject because they have been shown to be highly social, showing a range of behavioural and cognitive social skills. In addition, working with rats allows us to manipulate experimentally their social environment and, due to their short life span, we can study the trajectory of their social skills throughout their entire lifetime.In this project, we will follow 160 rats through their life. We will observe their undisturbed interactions and will present them with several non-invasive tasks to assess when they develop specific social skills independently or in a set, like remembering conspecifics, showing emotional contagion, consoling others, sharing food, helping others and using information from others. We will also test when they start to develop reciprocity. Comparing the emergence of reciprocity to that of the trajectory of social skills will help us to understand whether reciprocity is foundational to social competence. We predict that social skills are not predetermined but rather are shaped by the social environment as they are learned and practised. To test this, we plan to keep some rats in small groups of 4 individuals, i.e., the common group size for laboratory rats, and others in large groups of 16, i.e., the typical size of subgroups in the wild. We predict that rats from small groups will develop social skills later than rats from large groups, but not before reciprocity.Every year, millions of rats are used for research. Previous research has found that physical enrichment is important for their well-being. However, we understand very little about their social needs, especially whether they might benefit from living in larger groups. Large groups might enable the individuals to create their own social sub-group, where they can choose their preferred partners and avoid aggressive partners. Therefore, we will investigate whether rats in larger groups are more socially competent and show less aggression and more cooperation compared to those in smaller groups. In addition, we will assess their mood and predict that, if rats benefit from living in a large group, they will show more positive emotions than those from a small group. Finally, we will observe whether this enhanced well-being in large groups translates into an increased life span, which would speak in favour of housing rats in larger groups.In summary, this project will enable us to create new knowledge about how social animals learn to navigate through their social environment and how the underlying psychological mechanisms can evolve. Thus, this project will contribute to the hotly-debated topic of how social competence and prosociality more generally can evolve - a question that Darwin already struggled with and for which we now have the right tools to start to answer. This project will also shed light on the impact of social competence on wellbeing with the potential to improve the lives of many rats and other social lab animals by simply keeping them in larger groups and thereby also increasing scientific validity.

像许多其他动物一样，人类是社会性动物，有很大的社交欲望，这在新冠肺炎大流行中得到了体现。孤独与有限的社会联系会影响我们的身心健康。与此同时，与他人的互动可能会带来麻烦。因此，从早期开始，我们就需要学习如何在复杂的社会环境中导航。与他人充分互动的一个基本技能是互惠，即，与友善的人互动和合作，避免剥削性的合作伙伴。鉴于社会能力在我们的生活中扮演着重要的角色，令人惊讶的是，这是不清楚如何出现，并可以保持。这个项目的目标是阐明社会能力的起源及其对幸福的影响。基于我的工作的最新进展使老鼠成为一个理想的研究对象，因为它们被证明是高度社会化的，表现出一系列的行为和认知社交技能。此外，通过对老鼠的研究，我们可以通过实验来控制它们的社会环境。由于老鼠的寿命很短，我们可以研究它们一生中的社会技能轨迹。在这个项目中，我们将跟踪160只老鼠的一生。我们将观察他们不受干扰的互动，并将向他们提供几个非侵入性的任务，以评估他们何时独立或在一组中发展特定的社交技能，例如记住同类，表现出情绪感染，安慰他人，分享食物，帮助他人和使用他人的信息。我们还将测试他们何时开始发展互惠。将互惠的出现与社交技能的轨迹进行比较，将有助于我们理解互惠是否是社交能力的基础。我们预测，社会技能不是预先确定的，而是在学习和实践过程中由社会环境塑造的。为了测试这一点，我们计划将一些大鼠分成4个个体的小组，即，实验室大鼠的常见组大小，以及其他16只的大组，即，这是野生环境中子群的典型规模我们预测，小群体的老鼠比大群体的老鼠更晚地发展社会技能，但不会在互惠之前。以前的研究发现，身体充实对他们的幸福很重要。然而，我们对他们的社会需求知之甚少，特别是他们是否会从生活在更大的群体中受益。大群体可能使个体能够创建自己的社会子群体，在那里他们可以选择自己喜欢的伴侣，避免攻击性伴侣。因此，我们将研究大群体中的大鼠是否比小群体中的大鼠更有社会能力，表现出更少的攻击性和更多的合作。此外，我们还将评估它们的情绪，并预测，如果大鼠从大群体中受益，它们将比小群体中的大鼠表现出更多的积极情绪。最后，我们将观察这种在大群体中增强的幸福感是否会转化为寿命的延长，这将有利于将大鼠圈养在更大的群体中。总之，这个项目将使我们能够创造关于社会动物如何学习在社会环境中导航以及潜在的心理机制如何进化的新知识。因此，这个项目将有助于社会能力和亲社会性如何更普遍地进化的激烈辩论的话题-一个问题，达尔文已经挣扎，我们现在有正确的工具开始回答。该项目还将揭示社会能力对幸福的影响，有可能通过简单地将它们保持在更大的群体中来改善许多老鼠和其他社会实验室动物的生活，从而提高科学有效性。