Rutte Claudia, Taborsky Michael, Brinkhof Martin W G
Department of Behavioural Ecology, University of Berne, Wohlenstr. 50a, 3032 Hinterkappelen, Switzerland.
Trends Ecol Evol. 2006 Jan;21(1):16-21. doi: 10.1016/j.tree.2005.10.014. Epub 2005 Nov 3.
Social experience influences the outcome of conflicts such that winners are more likely to win again and losers will more likely lose again, even against different opponents. Although winner and loser effects prevail throughout the animal kingdom and crucially influence social structures, the ultimate and proximate causes for their existence remain unknown. We propose here that two hypotheses are particularly important among the potential adaptive explanations: the 'social-cue hypothesis', which assumes that victory and defeat leave traces that affect the decisions of subsequent opponents; and the 'self-assessment hypothesis', which assumes that winners and losers gain information about their own relative fighting ability in the population. We discuss potential methodologies for experimental tests of the adaptive nature of winner and loser effects.
社会经验会影响冲突的结果，以至于赢家更有可能再次获胜，而输家则更有可能再次失败，即使面对不同的对手也是如此。尽管赢家和输家效应在整个动物界普遍存在，并对社会结构产生至关重要的影响，但其存在的最终原因和直接原因仍不为人知。我们在此提出，在潜在的适应性解释中，有两个假说是特别重要的：“社会线索假说”，该假说认为胜利和失败会留下痕迹，影响后续对手的决策；以及“自我评估假说”，该假说认为赢家和输家会获得有关自己在群体中相对战斗能力的信息。我们讨论了对赢家和输家效应的适应性本质进行实验测试的潜在方法。
