{"id":28673,"date":"2016-09-17T03:34:44","date_gmt":"2016-09-17T03:34:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/fish-lose-their-unique-personality-when-they-go\/"},"modified":"2016-09-17T03:34:35","modified_gmt":"2016-09-17T03:34:35","slug":"fish-lose-their-unique-personality-when-they-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/fish-lose-their-unique-personality-when-they-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Fish lose their unique personality when they go to &#8216;school&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Dr Christos Ioannou and his colleagues from the School of Biological Sciences tested three-spined sticklebacks (the UK&#8217;s smallest freshwater fish) alone and in groups of ten.}<\/p>\n<p>They found that just like in humans, braver individuals led the groups, and that the fish stuck together when making a risky decision.<\/p>\n<p>But they concluded that the conformity needed to make a group decision is stronger than braver fish leading, meaning overall, that the individual personalities of fish were lost when in a group.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Ioannou said: &#8220;This is the first time that the suppression of personality in groups has been linked to its underlying cause, which is conformity in group decision making.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The researchers also found that testing in a group did not have a lasting effect when individuals were retested alone; it was as if the group tests never happened.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Ioannou added: &#8220;The behaviour of the fish seems to be &#8216;plastic&#8217; to the social situation &#8212; they show consistent individual differences in behaviour when tested alone &#8212; reflecting personality, but they are also happy to suppress this to be able to stick together with their shoal mates if there are others around.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The research, published in Science Advances, suggests that in social animals, when things get dangerous and animals form cohesive groups, risk-taking tendency when alone may not be a good indicator of the risk an individual actually faces.<\/p>\n<p>Funding for the research came from the Leverhulme Trust and the Natural Environment Research Council.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-15024 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/160916135002_1_540x360.jpg\" alt=\"Despite individual fish having their own personality, this gets suppressed when they make decisions together in a group.\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Dr Christos Ioannou and his colleagues from the School of Biological Sciences tested three-spined sticklebacks (the UK&#8217;s smallest freshwater fish) alone and in groups of ten.} They found that just like in humans, braver individuals led the groups, and that the fish stuck together when making a risky decision. But they concluded that the conformity [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[75],"byline":[2491],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-28673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-homenews","byline-science-daily"],"bylines":[{"id":2491,"name":"SCIENCE DAILY","slug":"science-daily","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2491,"name":"SCIENCE DAILY","slug":"science-daily","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28673\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28673"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=28673"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=28673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}