Journal article
Human third-party observers accurately track fighting skill and vigour along their unique paths to victory
Scientific Reports, Vol.12, pp.1-9
2022
PMCID: PMC9437099
PMID: 36050502
Abstract
Sexual selection via male-male contest competition has shaped the evolution of agonistic displays, weaponry, and fighting styles, and is further argued to have shaped human psychological mechanisms to detect, process, and respond appropriately to cues of fighting ability. Drawing on the largest fight-specific dataset to date across the sports and biological sciences (N = 2765 fights), we examined how different indicators of fighting ability in humans reflect unique paths to victory and indicate different forms of perceived and actual resource-holding power (RHP). Overall, we discovered that: (1) both striking skill and vigour, and grappling skill and vigour, individually and collectively predict RHP; (2) different RHP indicators are distinguished by a unique path to victory (e.g., striking skill is a knockout-typical strategy, whereas grappling vigour is a submission-typical strategy); and (3) third-party observers accurately track fighting skill and vigour along their unique paths to victory. Our argument that different measures of RHP are associated with unique paths to victory, and third-party observers accurately track fighting vigour and skill along their unique paths to victory, advance our understanding not only of human contest competition, but animal contest theory more broadly.
Details
- Title
- Human third-party observers accurately track fighting skill and vigour along their unique paths to victory
- Authors
- Neil R. Caton (Corresponding Author) - The University of QueenslandBarnaby J. W. Dixson (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Legacy
- Publication details
- Scientific Reports, Vol.12, pp.1-9
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date published
- 2022
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41598-022-19044-4
- ISSN
- 2045-2322
- PMID
- 36050502; PMC9437099
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
- Organisation Unit
- Australian Centre for Pacific Islands Research; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Health - Psychology; School of Health and Behavioural Sciences - Legacy
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99683498802621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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- Biology