Publications by authors named "Nicole H Hess"
Competitive gossip: the impact of domain, resource value, resource scarcity and coalitions.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci
November 2021
Those with better reputations often obtain more resources than those with poorer reputations. Consequently, gossip might be an evolved strategy to compete for valuable and scarce material and social resources. Influenced by models of non-human primate competition, we test the hypotheses that gossip: (i) targets aspects of reputation relevant to the domain in which the competition is occurring, (ii) increases when contested resources are more valuable, and (iii) increases when resources are scarcer.
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- Evolutionary models of human cooperation highlight the importance of reputation and truthful gossip about people's behavior, suggesting that competition for resources led to deceptive self-promotion in ancestral societies.
- Research using social psychological methods identified that reiterating gossip can enhance its perceived truth, particularly when the gossip is seen as uninteresting.
- Additionally, the credibility of gossip improves with multiple independent sources, while information that offers alternative interpretations or competitive dynamics between gossiper and subject reduces perceived veracity.