# Psychological Experiments On Rats



## xbexidabestx (Jun 17, 2013)

Thought that might get your attention 

I am currently studying psychology and sociology, and was wandering if any of you ratty lovers a) know of any psychological experiements tested on rats, if so please elaborate or post links  and b) if you have any ideas of how i could create my own (need i say - HUMANE!!) experiment I could test out on my rats. It doesnt matter if its been done before, Id love to try something to go back to my psychology lectures with!!

Thanks in advance people xx


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## PaigeRose (Apr 12, 2013)

Not sure if this is an experiment so to speak or more of an exercise on learning.

The whole reason I got into rats was an AP psych class I took my senior year of high school. The previous year one of my friends had the psych teacher for homeroom and in the spring time pulled me into the class room one day and said "Lookit the baby rats! Look arent they cute!"

I fell in love with the little faces and started looking into rats. I took the class knowing very little about psych but before the rats even came into the picture, it quickly became my favorite class. 

Apparently the teacher gets a litter of baby girl rats from a breeder every year. She didnt tell us the name of the person or anything just that the person breeds for good temperment. It was a rather large class and we were all in groups. Our little girl was an all black with a white belly and for some reason we called her "Sonic".

The first week, at the end of class, all we did was socialize. Every group had a week where they had to come in and clean, feed, water the whole cage after school. The whole point of the rats was to use operant and classical conditioning to teach the rats to ring a bell.

For this we put them in a box with an open top and cut a very tiny slit in the side. We started showing Sonic that peanut butter comes through the hole when the clicker goes off. One she realized that we added the bell. When she stepped near the bell, click, peanut butter. Then we made it harder and she had to move closer and closer to the top of the bell to get the click-reward. 

Unfortunatly she became more interested in trying to get out of the box so in the end she wouldnt do it for our teacher but it was still a fun class project. Some people got their rats to ring the bell in just a few days and one rat would ring it repeatedly. 

So thats my experience with rats and experiments but if youre looking for others, I think someone on this forum posted a few days ago a rat experiement that showed empathy. There was a rat in a small space and the other rat freed him and left him food.

Pavlov's dogs and Skinner's cats are two more animal related experiments that are good reads. My favorite experiment of all time has to be Milgram's obedience experiment. It gives me chills just thinking about it! If you havent read about it, definitely look it up. It was done on people (no one was hurt) and just... brilliant.

Law and Order: SVU did an amazing episode based on it with Robin Williams and yeah it was great. Season 9, the episode was called "Authority" and it was just really good, look it up if you havent seen it.

Anyway, I hope some of this was what you were looking for 

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## Ruby&Lola (Apr 25, 2013)

Oh! Oh! I'm in pschylogy and sociology too! I found this last week on some site. 

Rat Experiment 

In a simple experiment, researchers at the University of Chicago sought to find out whether a rat would release a fellow rat from an unpleasantly restrictive cage if it could. The answer was yes.

The free rat, occasionally hearing distress calls from its compatriot, learned to open the cage and did so with greater efficiency over time. It would release the other animal even if there wasn’t the payoff of a reunion with it. Astonishingly, if given access to a small hoard of chocolate chips, the free rat would usually save at least one treat for the captive— which is a lot to expect of a rat.

The researchers came to the unavoidable conclusion that what they were seeing was empathy— and apparently selfless behavior driven by that mental state.


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## Grawrisher (Sep 10, 2013)

Well aris came from my schools psychology club, it wasn't an "experiment" so to speak though 
They have a fundraiser every year where people bet on how long it will take a particular rat to go through a maze, there are rats named after every psych teacher and the teams train the rats to run through the maze as an exercise in behavioral conditioning, the person who bets the closest to any rat gets a prize


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## franjf (Dec 13, 2012)

Milgrams experiment on obedience, oh god the results and the video footage will follow me to the grave! So scary to think we could do that.
Aside from Pavlov and Skinner which I think could bring up interesting results with rats, I think Harlows study on attachment, he originally did this with Monkeys. But I'm sure it could be adapted for rats?


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

I was a psych /sociology double major back in the 1970's at Rutgers back in the heyday of the ratrunning. I pretty much recall all of the experiments that are still cited in all of your textbooks when they were still new and exciting. And by the way, most really didn't replicate nearly as well as the literature would lead you to believe... we were all just better at explaining away the "standard deviation" back then. 

You might also want to know that most of the very best rat studies were never published, because they were considered failures by their sponsors. Psychology and biology departments were often sponsored by private or government interests to publish papers that would support their agendas. When the results disproved the theories, the data was usually buried.

Naturally the advent of psychopharmachology pretty much changed the paradigm. It's just easier to change behavior with drugs than therapy or behavior mod?

The only meaningful purely psychological research that has been done on rats in the past decade relates to metacognition. My own work with rats I've trained indicates that this is going to be the most exciting and controversial area of study for some years to come. If you don't mind a little tar and a few feathers that's the place to be.

But if you really want to freak out your classmates, just train a true shoulder rat and myth-bust everything BF Skinner ever wrote. 

Best Luck.


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## xbexidabestx (Jun 17, 2013)

amazing stuff guys, thankyou!!

Yes, ive read up on all of the experiments above. All are such interesting reads

Im working on a few theories myself, looking more in depth as to weather rats feel jealousy, and whether you can train a rat using praise as a reward instead of a treat. Has worked teaching my youngest boy to jump a few feet from table onto me. Yayy!!!

I thinks its amazing they feel empathy, although most rat owners would have already known that 

Ill be sure to post any interesting reads on here for you like minded psych fans.

Thanks again x


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## Rat Daddy (Sep 25, 2011)

As a former psych major, rats were sort of a natural fit as a pet for my then 5 year old daughter. But the coolest thing I discovered is that rats can actually communicate bidirectionally with humans. Perhaps that's no surprise for dog owners but it seemed pretty far fetched for a rat. And when you add in that they are metacognative you come up with some pretty interesting interactions. 

We got incredibly lucky to work with a particularly intelligent rat that had an unbelievable anxiety/stress threshold and I worked with her self-actualize her maximum potential.

The results looked something like this:

She walked at heel








She explored outdoors and introduced herself to people she wanted to meet on her own, especially little girls.









And she could navigate distances of over a half mile with extreme competence. (rat is little white dot next to black trash can.) She's heading back to the car on her own.









And of course that unusual little true shoulder rat was Fuzzy Rat, who taught us all the principles of immersion theory.

As a psych major, the hardest thing for me was to let go of my preconceptions. Sure I knew rats could run mazes, but the idea that they can map many acres of outdoor terrain in their minds was a shock. 


Some of the unexpected experiences included:

Fuzzy Rat would lick me to reward me for correct responses to her communications. As in flip the experimental model over. 

She learned not only to come for treats, but to hide when she knew she was going to be called so she wouldn't miss getting rewarded for coming.

She used specific behaviors to indicate different things she wanted us to do. And she would adapt her behavior until we understood her. 

Rats map when they are sleeping. She would always go back to the place we parked the car the day before and start searching for it from there.

She could use rat communication to take advantage of other rats pre-programmed behaviors. She would steal food from her much younger and stronger roommate, when she got caught she would flip on her back and get groomed, then she would grab the food and go on her way, leaving the other rat confused and hungry. When the other rat finally figured it out she would squeak for help. I would intervene and she would slink off with her stolen food.

And yes as to jealousy, if she was being ignored, especially if we were training another rat she would go off refusing to respond to command and play with other people to make us jealous. She understood the concept of jealousy and how to use it against humans for effect.

If it helps in designing your experiments... the most important cognitive barrier in rat accomplishment is anxiety and stress management... like the smart vs stupid mice experiment of legend. Rats have a cumulative stress mechanism, so stress builds up over time. Once a rat reaches it's stress threshold, learning stops and usually panic behavior sets in. So as they can't handle the situation, they can't perform. When you get a rat like Fuzzy Rat, which was practically immune to normal stress and panic, the opposite happens, it's learning ability and performance level is multiplied several fold. I might add that indoors in a completely stress free environment, she was easily bored, likely to disobey command and prone to being destructive.

We're working with a new shoulder rat now, she's very competent outdoors and similar to Fuzzy Rat in many ways. She has a high stress management ability, but not nearly the insane stress tolerance of Fuzzy Rat.

Max, front row at a fireworks show:









And meeting new people at a town fair:

















To give you a visual reference... Fuzzy Rat was at least twice as competent and composed as Max. And you can get an idea of what Max can handle in the photos above. Max is however more comfortable and manageable indoors than Fuzzy Rat was.

Our rats are principally trained with tactile rewards and voice encouragement. Rats don't reward each other with treats and they don't necessarily expect to be rewarded with food by humans either. Some rats are more food motivated than others, but rats do consider tactile attention and soft reassuring words repeated as a reward.

Don't limit yourself to experiments that have been done or to your preconceptions of what a rat can handle or learn. Depending on your particular rat's stress tolerance you might be able to blow the lab studies away.

Final note for other people reading along.... Fuzzy Rat and Max are true shoulder rats, true shoulder rats are very rare, they were born with certain special qualities and they were raised from pups and received special training to be shoulder rats. If you try this at home with your rats, you will most likely get them killed. Unless you have the right rat to start with, and you have experience training shoulder rats, please do not try this at home.


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