Aggression
Violence and conflict

Although aggressive encounters are ubiquitous in the animal kingdom, with often high stakes, most encounters that involve aggression may be resolved through posturing, or displaying and trial of strength. Game theory is used to understand how such behaviors might spread by natural selection within a population, and potentially become 'Evolutionary Stable Strategies'. An initial model of resolution of conflicts is the hawk-dove game. Others include the Sequential assessment model and the Energetic war of attrition. These try to understand not just one-off encounters but protracted stand-offs, and mainly differ in the criteria by which an individual decides to give up rather than risk loss and harm in physical conflict (such as through estimates of resource holding potential).
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