The social implications of winner and loser effects
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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies
Published on: August 25, 2023
Lee Alan Dugatkin1, Matthew Druen
1Department of Biology, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA. lee.dugatkin@louisville.edu
Abstract:
Winner and loser effects have now been documented in a number of species. To our knowledge, experimental work, however, has focused exclusively on pairwise interactions, and not the extent to which winner and loser effects impact hierarchy formation. We report the results of experimentally manipulated winner and loser effects on hierarchy formation in a socially living species, the green swordtail, Xiphophorus helleri. Our results demonstrate that randomly chosen winners in pairwise aggressive contests were more likely to emerge as top-ranked individuals in a hierarchy, whereas randomly chosen losers were more likely to emerge as the lowest-ranking individuals, and that 'winner-neutral-loser' hierarchies were significantly overrepresented.
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