Stress and Social Behavior

Social behaviors can involve any intraspecies interactions and include communication, allo-grooming, aggression, mating behavior, and parental behavior. Stressors occur in a vast number of forms, including physical and psychological, and can either alter ongoing social behaviors in complex ways or trigger the emergence of social behaviors, such as alarm calling or aggression. Certain social behaviors, such as aggression, themselves can act as stressors, while other social behaviors can mitigate the impact of stressors. Both sex differences and individual differences can affect how social behaviors are modified by stress. An active area of research in behavioral neuroscience is to understand the highly complex interactions of stress and social behaviors.