  We develop a model to describe the development of dominance relations between
social animals as they use past experiences to inform future interactions.
Using the game-theoretic framework of a Hawk-Dove game with asymmetric
resource-holding potentials (RHPs), we derive a simple model that describes the
social interactions of animals that compete for resources. We then consider a
game-playing strategy in which animals acquire information about their RHP
asymmetry from the results of their previous contests and subsequently use
their asymmetry assessment to inform their behavior in future contests. We
examine how directly incorporating the fact that animals have incomplete
information in their interactions can lead to outcomes that differ from what
would be expected if one considers the situation as a static game in which the
animals have perfect information about the asymmetry size. We thereby obtain
results that are consistent with observations of dominance-hierarchy formation
in social animals. We also discuss how increased interactions between animals
can speed up the asymmetry assessment process and how this can explain why
aggression can sometimes decrease as the number of interactions between animals
increases over time.
