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Coping styles and behavioural flexibility: towards underlying mechanisms
Open accessAbstract
A coping style (also termed behavioural syndrome or personality) is defined as a correlated set of individual behavioural and physiological characteristics that is consistent over time and across situations. This relatively stable trait is a fundamental and adaptively significant phenomenon in the biology of a broad range of species, i.e. it confers differential fitness consequences under divergent environmental conditions. Behavioural flexibility appears to be an important underlying attribute or feature of the coping style that might explain consistency across situations. Proactive coping is characterized by low flexibility expressed as rather rigid, routine-like behavioural tendencies and reduced impulse control (behavioural inhibition) in operant conditioning paradigms. This article summarizes some of the evidence that individual differentiation in behavioural flexibility emerges as a function of underlying variability in the activation of a brain circuitry that includes the prefrontal cortex and its key neurochemical signalling pathways (e.g. dopaminergic and serotonergic input). We argue that the multidimensional nature of animal personality and the terminology used for the various dimensions should reflect the differential pattern of activation of the underlying neuronal network and the behavioural control function of its components. Accordingly, unravelling the molecular mechanisms that give rise to individual differences in the coping style will be an important topic in biobehavioural neurosciences, ecology and evolutionary biology.
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Siwińska, N., Żak, A., & Długopolska, D. (2026) · Journal of Veterinary Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.jveb.2026.06.007
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“Dogs that are withdrawn, avoidant, and/or despondent show behaviors consistent with a reactive coping style, while dogs that excessively vocalize, are hyper-active, and/or experience loss of impulse control align with what is known about the proactive coping style [83,135].”
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“This suggests that behavioral flexibility, defined as the ability of an individual to respond directly to and adjust their behavior in response to environmental stimuli [104], could also be a relevant indicator in the assessment of individual stress resilience.”
Do coping mechanisms magnify the burden of crime on wellbeing in Nigerian urban cities?
Agu, E. C., Orjiakor, C. T., Ogbozor, P. A., Hughes, Z., Ndukaihe, I. L. G., Eze, J. E., & Onwujekwe, O. E. (2026) · Wellbeing Space and Society · doi:10.1016/j.wss.2026.100483
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Leaning left: how turn bias and habitat complexity shape spatial cognition in a coral-reef fish
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“Individual differences in behaviour, or personality, can affect cognitive performance (Coppens et al. 2010; Carere and Locurto 2011; Sih and Del Giudice 2012).”
Metadata
- Authors
- Coppens, C. M., de Boer, S. F., & Koolhaas, J. M.
- Affiliations
- University of Groningen (NL)
- Department of Behavioural Physiology, University of Groningen, PO Box 14, 9750 AA Haren, The Netherlands
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2010-12-27
- Volume
- 365
- Issue
- 1560
- Pages
- 4021-4028
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC2992750
- OpenAlex
- W2136361247
- Semantic Scholar
- a728963ac55bd0a912d799a48dfeb94690ee6746
- Cited by
- 610
- References
- 64
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 38 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 48 · 2022: 38 · 2021: 32 · 2020: 52 · 2019: 43 · 2018: 44 · 2017: 41 · 2016: 43 · 2015: 46 · 2014: 40 · 2013: 35 · 2012: 24
- FWCI
- 27.88
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (submittedVersion)
- PubMed Central (submittedVersion)
- University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- University of Groningen research database (University of Groningen / Centre for Information Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Behavioral Neuroscience › Stress Responses and Cortisol
- Keywords
- coping styles, behavioral flexibility, animal personality, behavioral syndromes, proactive coping, behavioral inhibition, individual differences, prefrontal cortex, dopamine signaling, brain circuits
- MeSH terms
- Adaptation, Psychological, Animals, Behavior, Animal, Models, Neurological, Models, Psychological, Personality, Receptors, Dopamine, Reward, Prefrontal Cortex, Behavioral Research
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