Abstract: Reputation is the key mechanism in promoting human cooperation. On the one hand, people judge the trustworthiness of a partner and guide their behavior towards the partner based on their reputation. On the other hand, when reputation at stake, individuals act more cooperatively to gain a good reputation, thereby increasing the chance of getting help from others in the future. However, in daily life, only a fraction of the population can gain other’s reputations through direct observation, and these could inhibit the emergence of human cooperation. Gossip is very valuable to the third party who is absent. As an important way of exchanging social information, gossip is assumed to serve as a critically indirect mean for reputational information transmission, thereby helping to sustain the function of reputation systems. This claim raises issues about how gossip can promote cooperation by facilitating reputation transmission and how accurate and effective it is. This paper aims to review research on gossip to address those questions from the perspectives of gossipers, recipients, and gossip targets. First, after witnessing others’ behaviors in social dilemmas, observers are ready to share the reputation of the targets to the other members in the group, especially the reputation of defectors, even at a personal cost. Moreover, the valence of gossip accurately reflects the targets’ behaviors. Negative emotion and prosocial motivation are considered as the crucial factor driving observers to convey the defectors’ reputation. Second, after receiving the gossip information, recipients perceive it positively and use it as a guide to determine whether to cooperate with the targets and whom to interact. Notably, indirect information still influences the recipient’s decision even in the presence of substantial direct information. Although gossip could be intentionally misled in real life, comparing information from multiple sources could be an effective strategy for recipients to avoid the adverse influences of inaccurate gossip. Finally, when facing the threat of being gossiped, the gossip targets behave in a more prosocial fashion to demonstrate a positive reputation through gossip. Specifically, they act more generously, return more to their trustors, and contribute more to the group, when they know that the observers could potentially spread their reputation to their future partners. In sum, the accumulating evidence manifests that gossip is an accurate and effective way of reputation transmission, helping to sustain a high level of cooperation. For a better understanding of the mechanism of reputation transmission via gossip, further studies are needed to test. First, new experiments could be undertaken to examine the reciprocal motivation of gossipers to address the ultimate explanation of reputational information sharing. Second, future work is needed to investigate the active role of recipients during gossip. Investigations on the impact of being gossiped about on the targets are also recommended. Moreover, it will be worthwhile to investigate the neural substrate of reputational transmission and cooperative behavior by using neuroimaging methods.

Key words: Gossip, Reputation transmission, Cooperation

摘要： 声誉是人类的合作行为产生和维持的基石，但由于人与人之间的互动所提供的声誉信息有限，如何准确有效地传播声誉成为促进合作的另一个难题。因此，研究者们提出“八卦”可能是声誉传播的重要途径之一。作为一种间接的传播方式，“八卦”如何促进人类合作？其是否是一种准确有效的声誉传播途径？本文从八卦信息的传播者、接收者和八卦对象的角度对以上的问题进行了论述。在合作情景中，传播者乐意对他人的声誉信息进行传播，特别是背叛者的声誉信息，以帮助潜在的受害者；信息的接收者认可传递声誉信息的八卦，并且利用八卦信息辨别合作者，决定与八卦对象的合作行为；八卦同样能够有效地威慑八卦对象，促使八卦对象表现出更高的合作水平。未来的研究应该关注传播者的互惠动机、接收者对信息的主动寻求以及实际发生的八卦对八卦对象的影响，并开展声誉传播的神经机制研究。

关键词: 八卦, 声誉传播, 合作