The Costs and Benefits of Gossip in Reputation-Based Cooperation

Recommended citation: Dores Cruz, T. D., (2024, February 23). The Costs and Benefits of Gossip in Reputation-Based Cooperation, University of Southampton, School of Psychology, CRSI Speaker Series, Southampton, United Kingdom.

Abstract:

Gossip is an ever-present feature of our social interactions. We gossip to update one another about the others in our social environment. Our persistent gossip shapes perceptions and behaviors that are key to forming, keeping, and severing social relationships. These uses of gossip have given rise to the perspective that gossip has cooperative functions. This entails that people gossip to provide information about how to (not) behave and who can(not) be trusted to cooperate. This informs people about others’ reputations, which can serve to make better decisions about whom to cooperate with and whom to avoid. First, I will present research that supports this perspective based on experience sampling, scenario studies, and behavioral experiments. I find that people use reputational information provided by gossip to shape how they think about the targets of gossip. These gossip-based impressions guide receivers’ cooperative behavior toward targets: they cooperate with people they learn are likely to be cooperative and avoide people who they learn are likely to violate norms. Second, I focus on the puzzle of gossip as key for a cooperative social life while also being commonly perceived very negatively. Gossip is needed but could lead to costs for gossipers that motivate refraining from gossip. Based ongoing research using behavioral experiments, I will present the first steps towards understanding the puzzle of the costs and benefits of gossip. Receivers of gossip support gossip systems by punishing harming to the reputation-system from not contributing gossip or spreading false information and by rewarding accurate gossip.