Sexual preference is influenced by males' adolescent social stress history and social status, according to a research team including Nicole Cameron, assistant professor of psychology at Binghamton University, State University of New York.
Cameron, along with Cheryl McCormick from Brock University in Ontario, Canada, tested the hypotheses that social stress in adolescence decreases the "attractiveness" of male rats as sexual partners and that dominance status is a protective factor against the effects of social stress, when it comes to finding a sexual partner.
The team's main prediction was that females would spend more time with control males than stressed males, and that this bias would be greater for submissive than for dominant rats. The team subjected a group of male rats to social stress during adolescence, forcing the rats to change cage-partners regularly and establish their dominance in a group over and over. The team then placed a female into a mating chamber with one male who was stressed during adolescence and one who wasn't stressed, doing this with dominant and for subordinate rats separatly.
Among dominant pairs, female rats preferred the stressed males, spending more time with and visiting them more often. Among submissive pairs, females spent more time with control males than with social stress males.
The results show that experience of stress in adolescence leads to long-lasting changes in males that are perceptible to females, are moderated by social status and influence sexual behavior. But in the subordinate animals, the animals that were stressed during adolescence were not favored anymore.
