Social status and personality : stability in social state can promote consistency of behavioural responses

Stability of ‘state’ has been suggested as an underlying factor explainingbehavioural stability and animal personality (i.e. variation among, andconsistency within individuals in behavioural responses), but the possibilitythat stable social relationships represent such states remains unexplored.Here, we investigated the influence of social status on the expression andconsistency of behaviours by experimentally changing social status betweenrepeated personality assays. We used male domestic fowl (Gallus gallusdomesticus), a social species that forms relatively stable dominance hierarchies,and showed that behavioural responses were strongly affected bysocial status, but also by individual characteristics. The level of vigilance,activity and exploration changed with social status, whereas boldnessappeared as a stable individual property, independent of status. Furthermore,variation in vocalization predicted future social status, indicatingthat individual behaviours can both be a predictor and a consequence ofsocial status, depending on the aspect in focus. Our results illustrate thatsocial states contribute to both variation and stability in behaviouralresponses, and should therefore be taken into account when investigatingand interpreting variation in personality