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，人类是社会生物，并且有巨大的社交渴望，可以在19日大流行中举例说明。独自一人的社交联系可能会影响我们的身心健康。同时，与他人互动可能会引起麻烦。因此，从早期开始，我们需要学习如何在复杂的社交环境中导航。与他人充分互动的一种必不可少的基础技能是互惠，即与良好和避免剥削伴侣进行互动和合作。鉴于社会能力在我们的生活中起着重要的作用，令人惊讶的是，目前尚不清楚这是如何出现并可以维持的。该项目的目的是阐明社会能力的起源及其对健康的影响。基于我的工作的最新进展使老鼠变成了理想的研究主题，因为它们已被证明是高度社交的，表现出一系列的行为和认知社交技能。此外，与老鼠一起工作使我们能够通过实验性地操纵他们的社交环境，并且由于它们的寿命短，我们可以在整个一生中研究他们的社交技能的轨迹。在这个项目中，我们将跟随160只老鼠一生。我们将观察他们的不受干扰的互动，并将向他们介绍几项非侵入性任务，以评估他们何时独立或在某种程度上开发特定的社交技能，例如记住同种，表现出情感传染，安慰他人，共享食物，帮助他人并使用其他人的信息。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了解互惠是否是社会能力的基础。我们预测，社交技能不是预先确定的，而是在社会环境中所学到和实践的塑造。为了测试这一点，我们计划将一些大鼠组成4个个体的小组，即实验室大鼠的共同组大小，而其他人则为16个，即野外典型的亚组规模。我们预测，来自小组的大鼠将发展社交技能，而不是大群体的大鼠，但在互惠之前却不会。每一年，数百万只大鼠用于研究。先前的研究发现，身体富集对他们的福祉很重要。但是，我们对他们的社会需求一无所知，尤其是他们是否可以从较大的群体中受益。大型团体可以使个人能够创建自己的社会子群体，在那里他们可以选择自己的偏爱伙伴并避免侵略性伴侣。因此，我们将研究较大群体中的大鼠在社会上是否更有能力，并且与较小群体的大鼠相比表现出更少的侵略性和更多的合作。此外，我们将评估他们的情绪，并预测，如果老鼠从一群人生活中受益，他们将表现出比一小群人更多的积极情绪。最后，我们将观察到这一增强的福祉是否会转化为增加的寿命，这将说明大型群体中的住房大鼠。总而言之，该项目将使我们能够创建有关社交动物如何学会在其社交环境中导航以及基本心理机制如何发展的新知识。因此，该项目将为社会能力和亲社会如何发展的热门话题做出贡献 - 达尔文已经在与之斗争的问题中，我们现在有正确的工具可以开始回答。该项目还将阐明社会能力对健康的影响，从而通过将它们放在更大的群体中，从而提高科学有效性，从而改善许多老鼠和其他社会实验室动物的生活。