Two experiments studied conditions under which compliance will be increased. Experiment I showed that guilt (induced by having subjects deliver painful electric shocks to a confederate) will sharply increase compliance. Status of the confederate and presence of a witness had no effect. Expriment II differentiated among possible explanations for this effect, and suggested that guilt, rather than...

In this paper we describe a new memory test in rats, based on the differential exploration of familiar and new objects. In a first trial (T1), rats are exposed to one or to two identical objects (samples) and in a second trial, to two dissimilar objects, a familiar (the sample) and a new one. For short intertrial intervals (approximately 1 min), most rats discriminate between the two objects in...

Empathy is an emotional response to display of distress in others and reversed-empathy is an emotional response to non-distressed others in distressed subjects. Stress has memory enhancing effect on aversive experience. Here, I examine empathy and reversed empathy using the memory enhancing effects of stress in mice. Restrain stress enhanced aversive memory of a floor with electric shock, but r...

Learning what to approach, and what to avoid, involves assigning value to environmental cues that predict positive and negative events. Studies in animals indicate that the lateral habenula encodes the previously learned negative motivational value of stimuli. However, involvement of the habenula in dynamic trial-by-trial aversive learning has not been assessed, and the functional role of this ...

Two-factor theories of avoidance were conceived to explain responding in avoidance procedures that closely resemble the Pavlovian paradigm in superficial features, although differing in the fundamental contingency of reinforcement. Both typically involve an arbitrary conditioned stimulus and a trial-by-trial sequence of pairings between the conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. According to tw...

We investigated the effects of awareness on selective attention for masked and unmasked verbal threat material using a computerised version of the emotional Stroop. Participants were assigned to the high trait anxious (HTA) and low trait anxious (LTA) groups on the basis of questionnaire scores, and state anxiety was manipulated within participants through the threat of electric shock. To inves...

Cognitive control is needed when mistakes have consequences, especially when such consequences are potentially harmful. However, little is known about how the aversive consequences of deficient control affect behavior. To address this issue, participants performed a two-choice response time task where error commissions were expected to be punished by electric shocks during certain blocks. By ma...

In 11 studies, we found that participants typically did not enjoy spending 6 to 15 minutes in a room by themselves with nothing to do but think, that they enjoyed doing mundane external activities much more, and that many preferred to administer electric shocks to themselves instead of being left alone with their thoughts. Most people seem to prefer to be doing something rather than nothing, ev...

1. Rats were undernourished in early life by feeding their mothers a restricted quantity of a good-quality diet during pregnancy and lactation. All offspring were fed ad lib. from weaning. Behavioural tests were done using adult males. 2. Thresholds of aversion to electric shock were determined in a rectangular box, one side of which was designated 'live' and the other 'safe' (o V side) for any...

Restrained and unrestrained subjects were subjected to one of three distress manipulations prior to an ad lib taste task. The physical fear threat (anticipated electric shock) significantly decreased unrestrained subjects' eating and slightly increased restrained subjects' eating. Both ego threats (failure at an easy task or anticipating having to give a speech in front of an evaluative audienc...