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Psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity

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Abstract

Evolutionary models of human cooperation are increasingly emphasizing the role of reputation and the requisite truthful “gossiping” about reputation-relevant behavior. If resources were allocated among individuals according to their reputations, competition for resources via competition for “good” reputations would have created incentives for exaggerated or deceptive gossip about oneself and one’s competitors in ancestral societies. Correspondingly, humans should have psychological adaptations to assess gossip veracity. Using social psychological methods, we explored cues of gossip veracity in four experiments. We found that simple reiteration increased gossip veracity, but only for those who found the gossip relatively uninteresting. Multiple sources of gossip increased its veracity, as did the independence of those sources. Information that suggested alternative, benign interpretations of gossip decreased its veracity. Competition between a gossiper and her target decreased gossip veracity. These results provide preliminary evidence for psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity, mechanisms that might be used to assess veracity in other domains involving social exchange of information.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin

    Nicole H. Hess

  2. Institute for Theoretical Biology, Humboldt University, Invalidenstr. 43, 10115, Berlin, Germany

    Nicole H. Hess & Edward H. Hagen

Authors
  1. Nicole H. Hess
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  2. Edward H. Hagen
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicole H. Hess.

Additional information

Support for Hess provided by the LIFE Program, Max Planck Institute for Human Development. Support for Hagen provided by ECAgents, Contract No. 001940. We thank Peter Hammerstein, Don Symons, members of the ITB at Humboldt, several anonymous reviewers for helpful discussions and comments, and Gregor Caregnato of MPI for running experiment IV.

Nicole Hess is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin. She specializes in evolutionary approaches to gossip and female coalitions. Edward Hagen is a research scientist at the Institute for Theoretical Biology, Berlin.

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Hess, N.H., Hagen, E.H. Psychological adaptations for assessing gossip veracity. Hum Nat 17, 337–354 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-006-1013-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-006-1013-z

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