Influence of social context on Cinereous Tit (Parus cinereus) neophobic behavior

ABSTRACT Neophobia may offer benefits to animals by reducing their exposure to unknown dangers, but it can also limit their exploration of potential resources. Neophobia is a personality trait and individuals vary consistently in their behavioral response to novel and challenging situations. Personality researchers typically test subjects in isolation, which ignores the potential effects of the social environment. Using a model social species, the Cinereous Tit (Parus cinereus), we compared individual neophobic behavioral responses in asocial and social contexts. Further, we tested the influence of conspecifics with the same and opposite personality types on the focal individual's behavior. We found that social context influences the neophobic behavior of Cinereous Tits based on the personality of their conspecifics: the focal individual became bolder in the presence of bold conspecifics, the shy remained significantly shy when paired with shy conspecifics, and the shy became bold when paired with bold conspecifics. Our results showed in a social context individuals took shorter latency and spent maximum time at the feeder, which could be interpreted as the influence of conspecifics' personality types. Our results demonstrate that social context can mediate the expression of an individual personality. However, in order to better understand the functional role of personality in a social context, we recommend investigating interaction dynamics in larger social groups and assessing the costs and benefits of some of their activities (e.g., foraging, collective defense, or predator avoidance).