Integrating Personality Research and Animal Contest Theory: Aggressiveness in the Green Swordtail Xiphophorus helleri

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 = 2,765), 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.

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Cybernetic combatants support the importance of duels in the evolution of extreme weapons

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2020.0254 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 287 (1928) ◽

pp. 20200254

Author(s):

Murray P. Fea ◽

Romain P. Boisseau ◽

Douglas J. Emlen ◽

Gregory I. Holwell

Keyword(s):

Artificial Intelligence ◽

Arms Races ◽

Contest Theory ◽

Evolutionary Hypothesis ◽

Animal Contest ◽

Interstate Conflicts ◽

One To One ◽

A Current

A current evolutionary hypothesis predicts that the most extreme forms of animal weaponry arise in systems where combatants fight each other one-to-one, in duels. It has also been suggested that arms races in human interstate conflicts are more likely to escalate in cases where there are only two opponents. However, directly testing whether duels matter for weapon investment is difficult in animals and impossible in interstate conflicts. Here, we test whether superior combatants experience a disproportionate advantage in duels, as compared with multi-combatant skirmishes, in a system analogous to both animal and military contests: the battles fought by artificial intelligence agents in a computer war game. We found that combatants with experimentally improved fighting power had a large advantage in duels, but that this advantage deteriorated as the complexity of the battlefield was increased by the addition of further combatants. This pattern remained under the two different forms of the advantage granted to our focal artificial intelligence (AI) combatants, and became reversed when we switched the roles to feature a weak focal AI among strong opponents. Our results suggest that one-on-one combat may trigger arms races in diverse systems. These results corroborate the outcomes of studies of both animal and interstate contests, and suggest that elements of animal contest theory may be widely applicable to arms races generally.

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Perceived and actual fighting ability: determinants of success by decision, knockout or submission in human combat sports

Biology Letters ◽

10.1098/rsbl.2020.0443 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 16 (10) ◽

pp. 20200443

Author(s):

Sarah M. Lane ◽

Mark Briffa

Keyword(s):

Martial Arts ◽

Active Role ◽

Third Party ◽

Accurate Information ◽

Combat Sports ◽

Resource Holding Potential ◽

Contest Theory ◽

Fighting Ability ◽

Animal Contest ◽

Performance Traits

Animal contest theory assumes individuals to possess accurate information about their own fighting ability or resource-holding potential (RHP) and, under some models, that of their opponent. However, owing to the difficulty of disentangling perceived and actual RHP in animals, how accurately individuals are able to assess RHP remains relatively unknown. Furthermore, it is not just individuals within a fight that evaluate RHP. Third-party observers evaluate the fight performance of conspecifics in order to make behavioural decisions. In human combat sports, when fights remain unresolved at the end of the allotted time, bystanders take a more active role, with judges assigning victory based on their assessment of each fighter's performance. Here, we use fight data from mixed martial arts in order to investigate whether perceived fighting performance (judges' decisions) and actual fighting success (fights ending in knockout or submission) are based on the same performance traits, specifically striking skill and vigour. Our results indicate that both performance traits are important for victory, but that vigour is more important for fights resolved via decision, even though the effect of vigour is enhanced by skill. These results suggest that while similar traits are important for fighting success across the board, vigour is overvalued in judges' perceptions of RHP.

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The Contribution of Pavlov's Typology of CNS Properties to Personality Research

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040.2.2.125 ◽

1997 ◽

Vol 2 (2) ◽

pp. 125-138 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Jan Strelau

Keyword(s):

Soviet Union ◽

Former Soviet Union ◽

Animal Species ◽

Special Significance ◽

The West ◽

Personality Dimensions ◽

Personality Research ◽

Personality Theories ◽

Strength Of Excitation ◽

Point Of Departure

This paper presents Pavlov's contribution to the development of biological-oriented personality theories. Taking a short description of Pavlov's typology of central nervous system (CNS) properties as a point of departure, it shows how, and to what extent, this typology influenced further research in the former Soviet Union as well as in the West. Of special significance for the development of biologically oriented personality dimensions was the conditioned reflex paradigm introduced by Pavlov for studying individual differences in dogs. This paradigm was used by Russian psychologists in research on types of nervous systems conducted in different animal species as well as for assessing temperament in children and adults. Also, personality psychologists in the West, such as Eysenck, Spence, and Gray, incorporated the CR paradigm into their theories. Among the basic properties of excitation and inhibition on which Pavlov's typology was based, strength of excitation and the basic indicator of this property, protective inhibition, gained the highest popularity in arousaloriented personality theories. Many studies have been conducted in which the Pavlovian constructs of CNS properties have been related to different personality dimensions. In current research the behavioral expressions of the Pavlovian constructs of strength of excitation, strength of inhibition, and mobility of nervous processes as measured by the Pavlovian Temperament Survey (PTS) have been related to over a dozen of personality dimensions, mostly referring to temperament.

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Attachment Anxiety Mitigates the Well-Being Costs of Object Attachment

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000328 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 41-56

Author(s):

Lucas A. Keefer ◽

Zachary K. Rothschild

Keyword(s):

Past Research ◽

Well Being ◽

Attachment Anxiety ◽

Current Paper ◽

Personality Research ◽

Psychological Correlates ◽

State Study ◽

Object Attachment ◽

Diary Methods ◽

State Variation

Abstract. Clinical and personality research consistently demonstrates that people can form unhealthy and problematic attachments to material possessions. To better understand this tendency, the current paper extends past research demonstrating that anxieties about other people motivate these attachments. These findings suggest that although object attachment generally correlates with poorer well-being, it may attenuate well-being deficits associated with insecurity about close relationships. The current paper presents two studies using converging correlational ( N = 394) and diary methods ( N = 413) to test whether object attachments’ association with poorer well-being is moderated by relationship uncertainties. We find that both trait (Study 1) and state (Study 2) insecurities about others eliminated, and in some cases reversed, the negative psychological correlates of object attachment. These effects, however, were only observed when focusing on between-person variation in both studies; within-person analysis demonstrated that state variation in object attachment predicted better psychological well-being. These results highlight a need for more nuanced studies of object attachment and well-being.

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