The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling

Számadó, Szabolcs; Balliet, Daniel; Giardini, Francesca; Takács, Károly

doi:10.1098/rstb.2020.0286

Cited by 30 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 120 publications

(138 reference statements)

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“…Besides punishment, the other key mechanism in sustaining cooperation towards collective action is reputation [31][32][33][34]. Adopting a loose definition, reputation emerges when an individual's actions can be directly or indirectly observed by his peers and used to condition their own behaviours when playing with him.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reputation and punishment sustain cooperation in the optional public goods game

Podder

Righi

Pancotto

2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Cooperative behaviour has been extensively studied as a choice between cooperation and defection. However, the possibility to not participate is also frequently available. This type of problem can be studied through the optional public goods game. The introduction of the ‘Loner’ strategy' allows players to withdraw from the game, which leads to a cooperator–defector–loner cycle. While pro-social punishment can help increase cooperation, anti-social punishment—where defectors punish cooperators—causes its downfall in both experimental and theoretical studies. In this paper, we introduce social norms that allow agents to condition their behaviour to the reputation of their peers. We benchmark this with respect both to the standard optional public goods game and to the variant where all types of punishment are allowed. We find that a social norm imposing a more moderate reputational penalty for opting out than for defecting increases cooperation. When, besides reputation, punishment is also possible, the two mechanisms work synergically under all social norms that do not assign to loners a strictly worse reputation than to defectors. Under this latter set-up, the high levels of cooperation are sustained by conditional strategies, which largely reduce the use of pro-social punishment and almost completely eliminate anti-social punishment. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling’.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reputation and punishment sustain cooperation in the optional public goods game

Podder

Righi

Pancotto

2021

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…On the one hand, gossip can wreck the image of some individuals, affecting their performance, commitment, or self-esteem ( Wu et al, 2018 ; Xie et al, 2019 ; Martinescu et al, 2021 ). On the other hand, gossip can sustain mechanisms fostering cooperation, mutual control, and self-organization ( Ellickson, 1991 ; Dunbar, 1998 ; Hardy and Van Vugt, 2006 ; Nowak, 2006 ; Barclay and Willer, 2007 ; Piazza and Bering, 2008 ; Beersma and Kleef, 2011 ; Feinberg et al, 2014 ; Wu et al, 2016 ; Boehm, 2019 ; Giardini and Wittek, 2019a ; Számadó et al, 2021 ; Giardini et al, 2022 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brokering or Sitting Between Two Chairs? A Group Perspective on Workplace Gossip

Estévez

Takács

2022

Front. Psychol.

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Brokerage is a central concept in the organization literature. It has been argued that individuals in broker positions—i.e., connecting otherwise disconnected parts within a firm’s social network—can control the flow of information. It would imply their increased relevance in workplace gossip. This allegation, however, has not been addressed empirically yet. To fill this gap, we apply social network analysis techniques to relational data from six organizations in Hungary. First, we identify informal groups and individuals in broker positions. Then, we use this information to predict the likelihood with which positive or negative gossip is reported. We find more gossip when the sender and receiver are part of the same group and more positive gossip about in-group rather than out-group targets. Individuals in broker positions are more likely the senders and targets of negative gossip. Finally, even if both the brokers and the boss(es) are the targets of their colleagues’ negative gossip, the combination of the two categories (bosses in broker positions) does not predict more negative gossip anymore. Results are discussed in relation to the theoretical accounts on brokerage that emphasize its power for information control but fail to recognize the pitfalls of being in such positions.

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“…If religious rituals do not include costly signals and are performed frequently, participation in them can also serve to support reliable communication and indicate group commitment and adherence to the group norms. In several recent studies that explore the different contexts and costs of signalling strategies, the attention shifted from signallers to signal receivers and their assessment of subtle signals (Barker et al, 2019;Bliege Bird, Ready, Power, 2018;Bliege Bird, Power, 2015;Power, 2017aPower, , 2017bPower, , 2018Power, Ready, 2019;Számadó et al, 2021; see also Raihani, Power, 2021). In this paper, we follow this approach and investigate how people living in a village evaluate the subtle signals of newcomers.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Subtle Signals Linked to Religious Rituals in the Evaluation of Newcomers by a Village Community

Uhrin¹,

Bužeková²

2022

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The purpose of the paper is to explore the role of religious rituals in assessing the behaviour of new people who come to live in their locality. It presents ethnographic data collected in a village in western Slovakia to demonstrate that participation in rituals plays an important role in the old settlers' descriptions of newcomers. To interpret their statements, we refer to the signalling theory which was applied in the cognitive and evolutionary approach to the study of socio-cultural phenomena. Empirical work in this field has shown that participation in low-frequency and high-cost religious rituals is perceived as an honest signal of group commitment. We argue that if such rituals are absent in a particular locality, then trustworthiness, commitment to the group, and compliance with group norms are communicated by other types of signal, in particular high-frequency low-cost subtle signals, such as participating in various activities related to religious life, in particular regular religious rituals. This paper is a preliminary study which aims to draw attention to subtle religious signals in particular socio-cultural settings.

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The language of cooperation: reputation and honest signalling

Cited by 30 publications

References 120 publications

Reputation and punishment sustain cooperation in the optional public goods game

Reputation and punishment sustain cooperation in the optional public goods game

Brokering or Sitting Between Two Chairs? A Group Perspective on Workplace Gossip

The Role of Subtle Signals Linked to Religious Rituals in the Evaluation of Newcomers by a Village Community

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