Research data · Disease model and test

Social interaction test in anxiety research

From 2021 to 2025, 87 animal research papers on anxiety mentioned the social interaction test in their title or abstract.

That is 1.1 times the 79 papers of 2011 to 2015. Between the same two periods, the papers on anxiety that mention any of the 90 tests we count grew faster, to 1.3 times as many.

87 papers on anxiety from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the social interaction test
3% of the papers on anxiety that mention any test mention the social interaction test
18% of the papers that mention the social interaction test are on anxiety
1.1 times as many papers as in 2011 to 2015

Papers by year

Animal research papers on anxiety that mention the social interaction test, by year, 2001 to 2026

The 2026 bar counts papers added to PubMed by November 8, 2026.

  • Papers in a full year
  • 2026 so far
Show the counts for each year
Papers by year
YearPapers
200114
20029
200313
200421
200513
20067
200712
20089
200913
201015
201116
201212
20139
201423
201519
201622
201723
201820
201915
202019
202121
202215
202313
202418
202520
2026 (part year)19

Papers on anxiety that mention the social interaction test fell from 21 in 2021 to 13 in 2023, then rose to 20 in 2025. Part of this dip may come from PubMed's indexing rather than from fewer studies. Where PubMed has indexed a paper, we take its disease models from that indexing. Otherwise PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, has to find the disease in the title or abstract, or the paper is not counted here. Papers that PubMed indexed under the subject heading Animals also fell and rose, from 200,221 in 2021 to 156,447 in 2023 and 235,479 in 2025.

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 87 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Mouse
41 papers 47%
Rat
40 papers 46%
Zebrafish
3 papers 3%
Other animals
3 papers 3%
Fruit fly
1 paper 1%

“Other animals” counts papers that use none of the species this chart names.

Tests mentioned alongside the social interaction test

Each bar is one test, with how many of the 87 papers also mention it, and what share that is. Of these papers, 15 (17%) mention no other test.

The 12 tests these papers mention most

47 papers 54%
25 papers 29%
21 papers 24%
14 papers 16%
5 papers 6%
3 papers 3%

Which papers count

A paper counts here when it is animal research, mentions the social interaction test in its title or abstract, and studies anxiety.

We tell whether a paper studies anxiety from its MeSH terms, the subject headings the National Library of Medicine adds when it indexes a paper. For a paper without MeSH terms, PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, has to find the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one disease model. A paper that mentions the test only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low.

The page on anxiety research names the subject headings we count as anxiety. Download the test list for the search terms we used for the social interaction test, or the paper list for the PubMed ID of every paper behind these counts. Our main page, Behavioral tests in published research, has the full method and each source's terms of use.

More tests and disease models

Every pairing of a disease model and a test with 30 or more papers from 2021 to 2025 has a page like this one.

Papers on other disease models that mention the social interaction test

The page on the social interaction test counts all the papers that mention it, whatever they study. The page on anxiety research ranks the tests by their papers on anxiety.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Social interaction test in anxiety research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/anxiety/social-interaction-test

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_anxiety_social_interaction_test_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Social interaction test in anxiety research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/models/anxiety/social-interaction-test},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

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