Brief Report
Cyril C. Grueter, Liam Johnson, Michael Leaning, Ming Jay Tan, Zane Jones & Jeremy Peris
Human Ethology Bulletin, Volume 31, No 2, 45-51, published June 30, 2016
DOI: https://doi.org/10.22330/heb/312/045-051
ABSTRACT
It has been theorized that escalated aggression in animal intergroup contests is more likely to occur when the fighting ability or resource holding potential (RHP) of the two involved groups are similar. In an attempt to test this model for human intergroup contests, we investigated the effect of differences in RHP on aggression during ice hockey games. We mined data on penalty minutes accrued and differences in team ranks for professional ice hockey games (n = 1230) in the National Hockey League of Northern America (NHL). The former served as a surrogate measure of conflict escalation and the latter was used as a proxy for RHP. Using a linear mixed model approach, we found a significant but weak negative effect of differences in team ranks on penalty minutes, i.e. escalation was marginally more frequent when teams were more similar in rank. Various possible shortcomings of the study design are discussed.
Keywords: Resource holding potential, conflict escalation, sports contests.
ISSN: 2224-4476
