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Updated: Jul 13, 2026

Assessing Dominant-Submissive Behavior in Adult Rats Following Traumatic Brain Injury
Published on: December 16, 2022
Modulating effects in learned helplessness of dyadic dominance-submission relations
Cristina Díaz-Berciano1, Francisco de Vicente, Elisa Fontecha
1Departamento de Psicología Básica I (Procesos Básicos), Facultad de Psicología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Campus de Somosaguas, 28223 Madrid, Spain. cdiazberciano@psi.ucm.es
Abstract:
In this experiment, learned helplessness was studied from an ethological perspective by examining individual differences in social dominance and its influence on the effects of helplessness. Ninety animals were used, 30 randomly selected and 60 selected because of their clear dominance or submission. Each condition (dominant, submissive, and random) was distributed in three subgroups corresponding to the triadic design. The test consisted of an escape/avoidance task. The results showed that the animals in the uncontrollable condition performed worse than those in the controllable and no treatment conditions. Social submission and dominance reduced vulnerability of the subjects against learned helplessness. Submission had a facilitating effect on subsequent learning, independently of whether pretreatment was controllability or uncontrollability. Learned mastery was observed in the submissive condition, because submission benefited the subjects in the controllable condition in comparison with the untreated subjects, and dominance impaired the subjects in the controllable condition.
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