Rodents can transfer pain or fear and develop empathy by emotional contagion. Empathy may affect behavior impacting the results of behavioral tests. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of empathy behavior on the results of the passive avoidance test in rats housed in different conditions. Passive avoidance test was performed on male adult Sprague-Dawley rats divided into three groups with different housing conditions to investigate the contribution of emotional contagion of empathy by odor and auditory senses. They were housed in the same room and in the same cage (group 1, n=10), in the same room but in a separate cage as a single rat (group 2, n=10), and in separate rooms as a single rat in a separate cage (group 3, n=10). The test consisted of three parts: (I) exploration, (II) an aversive electrical stimulation on foot and learning, and (III) retention test. The latency time taken by each rat to enter the dark compartment in the retention test was recorded. Statistical analyses were performed by Kruskal-Wallis test. Rats housed in the same room and in the same cage (group 1) was showed significant decrease in latency time than other two groups (p=0.007). There was no significant difference between the latency times of group 2 and group 3 (p=0.446), and the latency times were increased in both groups. We suggest that empathy behavior may affect passive avoidance test results and housing conditions of the animals should be considered (Supported by TUBITAK-Grant#1919B012305916).