Date of Award

5-1975

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Psychology

Abstract

The present study was designed to assess behavioral changes in social dominance, which may accompany or be affected by short term crowding and any adrenal enlargement which may be a concomitant of crowding. To avoid methodological inaccuracy and further establish whether different measures of dominance would accrue the same results a multimethod approach suggested by Howells and Kise (1974) was employed. · Additionally sequence of test presentation was considered and both male and female subjects were used to determine if the measures differentially discriminated between the sexes.

This experiment as designed to evaluate the effects of crowding (independent variable) on the social behavior of dominance (dependent variable). Dominance refers to behavior which was observed in an individual Y maze as number of alternations; behavior observed in a competitive eating situation where the rat of the pair spending the greatest amount of time at the one rat feeding station was considered the most dominant; and behavior in an underwater dominance tube in which the rat that forced another rat back to its start .box was considered the most dominant.

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