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Deterrence and transmission as mechanisms ensuring reliability of gossip

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Abstract

Spreading information about the members of one’s group is one of the most universal human behaviors. Thanks to gossip, individuals can acquire the information about their peers without sustaining the burden of costly interactions with cheaters, but they can also create and revise social bonds. Gossip has also several positive functions at the group level, promoting cohesion and norm compliance. However, gossip can be unreliable, and can be used to damage others’ reputation or to circulate false information, thus becoming detrimental to people involved and useless for the group. In this work, we propose a theoretical model in which reliability of gossip depends on the joint functioning of two distinct mechanisms. Thanks to the first, i.e., deterrence, individuals tend to avoid informational cheating because they fear punishment and the disruption of social bonds. On the other hand, transmission provides humans with the opportunity of reducing the consequences of cheating through a manipulation of the source of gossip.

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Notes

  1. Transmission is specific as long as we accept that “reputation” is an evaluation in which the source is hidden.

  2. I acknowledge that belief revision is more complex than it is stated in the example.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Rosaria Conte, Mario Paolucci, Gennaro Di Tosto and all the participants at the International workshop on “Foundations of social signals. An outline”, held in Rome in 2009 for useful comments and insights.

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  1. Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University (CEU), 1023 Frankel Leo u., 30-34, Budapest, Hungary

    Francesca Giardini

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  1. Francesca Giardini
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Correspondence to Francesca Giardini.

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This article is part of the Supplement Issue on “Social Signals. From Theory to Applications,” guest-edited by Isabella Poggi, Francesca D’Errico, and Alessandro Vinciarelli.

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Giardini, F. Deterrence and transmission as mechanisms ensuring reliability of gossip. Cogn Process 13 (Suppl 2), 465–475 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-011-0421-0

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