Social life necessitates cognitive competence to meet the dynamic demands of social development. The formation of dominance hierarchy is a general phenomenon in social groups. As an essential element of executive and cognitive function, working memory could influence and be influenced by social status in a dominance hierarchy. However, the direction and degree of the association between them through different developmental stages remain unclear. To address this issue and clarify the “cause or consequence” problem, we investigated the spatial working memory performance in a Y-maze and Morris water maze in home-caged sibling Wistar rats (N = 26 cages, three rats/cage) through three stages of their life: before (week 7), during (week 10), and after (week 20) assumed timings of the social dominance hierarchy formation (SDHF). We used the social dominance tube test during the assumed time of hierarchy formation (weeks 9–11) to measure the relative dominance status in each cage. Here, we found that higher working memory index before SDHF could be predictive of later acquisition of higher social status. Working memory performance declined for all animals during SDHF, in which agonistic conflicts are increased. However, living within an established hierarchical social network for several weeks deteriorated the working memory performance of dominant and middle-ranked animals, while the performance of subordinates improved and got significantly better than higher-ranked animals. In conclusion, while working memory and social status were correlated positively before dominance hierarchy formation, there was a trade-off between them after the formation of it. In contrast to the common view, these results highlight the adverse effect of higher social status on cognitive behavior.

社会生活需要认知能力来满足社会发展的动态需求。支配等级的形成是社会群体中的普遍现象。作为执行和认知功能的基本要素，工作记忆可以影响和受支配等级中的社会地位的影响。然而，它们在不同发展阶段之间关联的方向和程度仍不清楚。为了解决这个问题并澄清“原因或后果”问题，我们研究了家笼同胞 Wistar 大鼠（N = 26 个笼子，3 只大鼠/笼子）在 Y 迷宫和 Morris 水迷宫中的空间工作记忆性能，直到三个他们生命的阶段：之前（第 7 周）、期间（第 10 周）和之后（第 20 周）假定社会支配等级形成 (SDHF) 的时间。我们在假定的等级形成时间（第 9-11 周）使用社会优势管测试来测量每个笼子中的相对优势状态。在这里，我们发现在 SDHF 之前更高的工作记忆指数可以预测以后获得更高的社会地位。在 SDHF 期间，所有动物的工作记忆能力下降，其中激动冲突增加。然而，在一个已建立的等级社会网络中生活数周会使占主导地位和中等等级动物的工作记忆表现恶化，而下属的表现则有所改善，并且明显优于等级较高的动物。总之，虽然工作记忆和社会地位在优势等级形成之前呈正相关，但在优势等级形成之后它们之间存在权衡。