What sets the odds of winning and losing?

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.