The content and structure of reputation domains across human societies: a view from the evolutionary social sciences

Abstract

Reputations are an essential feature of human sociality and the evolution of cooperation and group living. Much scholarship has focused on reputations, yet typically on a narrow range of domains (e.g. prosociality and aggressiveness), usually in isolation. Humans can develop reputations, however, from any collective information. We conducted exploratory analyses on the content, distribution and structure of reputation domain diversity across cultures, using the Human Relations Area Files ethnographic database. After coding ethnographic texts on reputations from 153 cultures, we used hierarchical modelling, cluster analysis and text analysis to provide an empirical view of reputation domains across societies. Findings suggest: (i) reputational domains vary cross-culturally, yet reputations for cultural conformity, prosociality, social status and neural capital are widespread; (ii) reputation domains are more variable for males than females; and (iii) particular reputation domains are interrelated, demonstrating a structure consistent with dimensions of human uniqueness. We label these features: cultural group unity , dominance , neural capital , sexuality , social and material success and supernatural healing . We highlight the need for future research on the evolution of cooperation and human sociality to consider a wider range of reputation domains, as well as their social, ecological and gender-specific variability. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’.

Gossip and reputation in everyday life

“…Future work will need to further examine the multi-dimensionality of partner qualities that can be inferred from gossip. Nonetheless, the current findings suggest that future research should consider how these different dimensions of person perception can be integrated into models of reputation-based cooperation (also see [ 76 ] for different domains of reputation). Future theoretical models can include agents that vary on these attributes, consider how different behaviours impact these evaluations in gossip, and model strategies that use evaluations of these different dimensions to condition cooperation.…”

The complexity of human cooperation under indirect reciprocity

“…On top of the mentioned literature on finite state automata [47,97,98,100], other alternatives include extended logic formalisms [49], alternative logic operators [110] or other measures of Boolean function complexity [111]. Third, it can be relevant to extend the formalism we discuss in the present paper to quantify cognitive complexity in other domains (beyond cooperation) where social interactions are also mediated by reputations [112].…”

The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling

“…Their interdisciplinary review also contrasts empirical insights from various disciplines about ecological factors that shape reputations with the way models address the questions of reputation-based cooperation. Garfield et al [61] use the Human Relations Area Files ethnographic database to characterize the cross-cultural diversity in reputation domains. They find that while there is substantial variation (not only between societies but also between men and women), reputations for cultural conformity, prosociality, social status and neural capital are widespread.…”