ArticleBiology letters2020
Perceived and actual fighting ability: determinants of success by decision, knockout or submission in human combat sports.
Article in Biology letters, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Intrasexual Selection for Upper Limb Length in Homo sapiens.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Article
- Sexual selection for both diversity and repetition in birdsong.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Facial width-to-height ratio predicts fighting success: A direct replication and extension of Zilioli et al. (2014).Aggressive behavior · 2022Article
- Human third-party observers accurately track fighting skill and vigour along their unique paths to victory.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Perceived and actual fighting ability: determinants of success by decision, knockout or submission in human combat sports.Biology letters · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
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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Registered trials
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