Victory displays: A game-theoretic analysis

Abstract

Two rationales have been proposed verbally for the function of victory displays, which are performed by the winners of contests but not by the losers. The "advertising" rationale is that victory displays are attempts to communicate victory to other members of a social group that do not pay attention to contests or cannot otherwise identify the winner. The " browbeating" rationale is that victory displays are attempts to decrease the probability that the loser of a contest will initiate a future contest with the same individual. We formally explore the logic of these rationales with game-theoretic models. The models show that both rationales are logically sound; however, all other things being equal, the intensity of victory displays will be highest through advertising in groups where the reproductive advantage of dominance is low and highest through browbeating in groups where the reproductive advantage of dominance is high. © The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved.