The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation

Gossip and reputation are core processes in societies and have substantial consequences for individuals, groups, communities, organizations, and markets.. Academic studies have found that gossip and reputation have the power to enforce social norms, facilitate cooperation, and act as a means of social control. The key mechanism for the creation, maintenance, and destruction of reputations in everyday life is gossip - evaluative talk about absent third parties. Reputation and gossip are inseparably intertwined, but up until now have been mostly studied in isolation.

The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation fills this intellectual gap, providing an integrated understanding of the foundations of gossip and reputation, as well as outlining a potential framework for future research. Volume editors Francesca Giardini and Rafael Wittek bring together a diverse group of researchers to analyze gossip and reputation from different disciplines, social domains, and levels of analysis. Being the first integrated and comprehensive collection of studies on both phenomena, each of the 25 chapters explores the current research on the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of the gossip-reputation link in contexts as diverse as online markets, non-industrial societies, organizations, social networks, or schools.

International in scope, the volume is organized into seven sections devoted to the exploration of a different facet of gossip and reputation. Contributions from eminent experts on gossip and reputation not only help us better understand the complex interplay between two delicate social mechanisms, but also sketch the contours of a long term research agenda by pointing to new problems and newly emerging cross-disciplinary solutions.

Francesca Giardini is Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Groningen.

Rafael Wittek is Professor of Theoretical Sociology at the University of Groningen.

1. Introduction: Mechanisms, Structures, and Contexts of Gossip and Reputation
Francesca Giardini and Rafael Wittek

I DISCIPLINARY FOUNDATIONS
2. The Sociology of Gossip, Reputation, and Cooperation
Francesca Giardini and Rafael Wittek
3. Human Sociality and Psychological Foundations
Nicholas Emler
4. Reputation in Moral Philosophy
Gloria Origgi
5. Gossip, Reputation, and the Study of Language
Haykaz Mangardich and Stanka A. Fitneva
6. Gossip in Ethnographic Perspective
Niko Besnier

II INDIVIDUAL COGNITION AND EMOTION
7. The Neural Basis of Gossip and Reputation
Riccardo Boero
8. Gossip and Reputation in Childhood Development
Gordon P. D. Ingram
9. Gossip and Emotions
Elena Martinescu, Onne Janssen, and Bernard A. Nijstad

III STRATEGIC INTERDEPENDENCIES
10. Gossip as a Social Skill
Francis T. McAndrew
11. Gossip and Reputation in Social Dilemmas
Manfred Milinski
12. Reputation in Game Theory
Charles Roddie
13. Agent-Based Models of Reputation and Status
André Grow and Andreas Flache

IV EVOLUTION, COMPETITION, AND GENDER
14. Gossip and Reputation in Small Scale Societies: A View from Evolutionary Anthropology
Christopher Boehm
15. Gossip, Reputation and Friendship in In-group Competition
Nicole H. Hess and Edward H. Hagen
16. Women's Gossip as an Intrasexual Competition Strategy: An Evolutionary Approach to Gender and Discrimination
Adam Davis,Tracy Vaillancourt, Steven Arnocky, and Robert Doyel

V POWER AND STATUS
17. How Celebrities Emerge and Evolve by Means of Mass Mediated Gossip
Charlotte J.S. De Backer, Hilde Van den Bulck, Maryanne L. Fisher, and Gaëlle Ouvrein
18. On the Nature of Gossip, Reputation, and Power Inequality
Sally Farley
19. Gossip and Reputation in Adolescence Networks
Dorottya Kisfalusi, Károly Takács, and Judit Pál

VI MARKETS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND NETWORKS
20. Trust and Reputation in Markets
Andreas Diekmann and Wojtek Przepiorka
21. The Economics of Gossip and Collective Reputation
Federico Boffa and Stefano Castriota
22. Antecedents and Consequences of Gossip in Work Groups
Bianca Beersma, Gerben A. van Kleef, and Maria T. M. Dijkstra
23. Gossip and Reputation in Social Networks
Lea Ellwardt

VII THE WEB, COMPUTERS, AND TECHNOLOGY
24. Gossip and Reputation in Computational Systems
Jordi Sabater-Mir
25. Online Reputation Systems
Chris Snijders and Uwe Matzat
26. Gossip, Internet-based Reputation Systems and Governance
Lucio Picci