The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation provides an integrated and comprehensive understanding of both phenomena. Through twenty-five chapters from eminent experts, the Handbook explores current research on the antecedents, processes, and outcomes of the gossip-reputation link in contexts as diverse as online markets, non-industrial societies, modern firms, social networks, and schools.

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.

Reputations can make or break citizens, communities, or companies. Reputations matter for individual careers, for one's chances of finding a partner, for a profession's credibility, or for the value of a firm's stock options - to name but a few. 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 present Handbook closes this gap, drawing on cutting edge insights from a multitude of disciplines, ranging from psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology and economics to philosophy, neurobiology and computer science.

The Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Competition reviews and organizes the literature on the psychology of competition and brings together leading researchers studying competition across the field of psychology. This volume is a crucial interdisciplinary investigation into the variety of perspectives and approaches to the psychology of competition, facilitating new research and integration in the field.

The scientific study of human mating has mushroomed over the past three decades, and this growth in turn has generated a proliferation of evolving literature revealing fresh discoveries about mate attraction, mate choice, mate retention, marital satisfaction, jealousy, infidelity, intimate partner violence, breakups, internet dating, cyberstalking, and sexual coercion. In The Oxford Handbook of Human Mating, editor David M. Buss showcases contributions from the best and the brightest scientists in the field, providing up-to-date summaries of theories and empirical evidence of the science of human mating strategies. Much of the research in the field is guided by sexual selection theory. Over 150 years after Darwin's proposal of sexual selection theory, it has become the most important overarching theoretical framework for the scientific study of the mating strategies of all sexually reproducing species, including humans. A mountain of research centered around Darwin's classic book has documented the many complexities of human mate competition and mate choice; how these processes differ between the sexes; and how they differ as a function of sex ratio, mate value, social contexts, ovulation cycles, personality characteristics, and cultural norms and mating rituals. Thus, the science is now ripe for a collection of work by eminent scholars in the field. David M. Buss is a leading researcher and pioneer in the study of human mating strategies, and he applies his expertise to the curation of this volume, which includes major sections covering theories of human mating; mate selection and mate attraction; mate competition; sexual conflict in mating; human pair bonding; the endocrinology of mating; and mating in the modern world.

In this Handbook, Laith Al-Shawaf and Todd K. Shackelford have gathered a group of leading scholars in the field to present a centralized resource for researchers and students wishing to understand emotions from an evolutionary perspective. Experts from a number of different disciplines, including psychology, biology, anthropology, psychiatry, and others, tackle a variety of "how" (proximate) and "why" (ultimate) questions about the function of emotions in humans and nonhuman animals, how emotions work, and their place in human life. Comprehensive and integrative in nature, this Handbook is an essential resource for students and scholars from a diversity of fields wishing to build upon their theoretical and empirical understanding of the emotions.

The premise of this book is that research into gossip, organization, and work is an important idea whose time has come. A key feature of the book is the inclusion of ‘practice points’ showing how – and where – theory and/or research intersect with practice and vice versa. They are intended as signposts to future thinking and theorizing, tempting readers to venture outside of their ‘home’ disciplines and territories, conceptual comfort zones, and methodological mindsets. The overall aim of the book is to: (i) provide enough information for readers to decide where they might want to go next; (ii) offer some theoretical directions and ethical principles; and (iii) make suggestions regarding what academic-practitioner tools and techniques will help them along the way, including arts-based and mixed-methods research that focuses on real-world lived experience(s) of gossip. It will be relevant to researchers at all stages of their career: from students at the start of their academic journey, to ‘seasoned’ scholars with more extensive experience. The book is also intended to be readable and relevant to practitioners with academic interests, who seek to reflect critically upon, and develop, their practice in times of turbulence and change and in the COVID-19 era.

Gossiping and its reputation effects are viewed as the most powerful mechanism to sustain cooperation without the intervention of formal authorities. Being virtually costless, gossiping is highly effective in monitoring and sanctioning norm violators. Rational individuals cooperate in order to avoid negative reputations. But this narrative is incomplete and often leads to wrong predictions. Goal Framing Theory, a cognitive-behavioral approach anchored in evolutionary research, provides a better explanatory framework. Three overarching goal frames (hedonic, gain, and normative) constantly compete for being in our cognitive foreground. This Element argues that for gossip to have reputation effects, a salient normative goal frame is required. But since the hedonic mindset usually trumps gain and normative concerns, most gossip will be driven by hedonic motives and therefore not have strong reputation effects. Propositions on cultural, structural, dispositional, situational, and technological gossip antecedents and consequences are developed and illustrated with evidence from the empirical record.

"Evolutionary social science is having a renaissance. This volume showcases the empirical and theoretical advancements produced by the evolutionary study of romantic relationships. The editors assembled an international collection of contributors to trace how evolved psychological mechanisms shape strategic computation and behavior across the lifespan of a romantic partnership. Each chapter provides an overview of historic and contemporary research on the psychological mechanisms and processes underlying initiation, maintenance, and dissolution of romantic relationships. Contributors discuss popular and cutting-edge methods for data analysis and theory development, critically analyse the state of evolutionary relationship science, and provide discerning recommendations for future research. The handbook integrates a broad range of topics (e.g., partner preference and selection, competition and conflict, jealousy and mate guarding, parenting, partner loss and divorce, and post-relationship affiliation) that are discussed alongside major sources of strategic variation in mating behavior, such as sex and gender diversity, developmental life history, neuroendocrine processes, technological advancement, and culture. Its content promises to enrich students' and established researchers' views on the current state of the discipline and should challenge a diverse cross-section of relationship scholars and clinicians to incorporate evolutionary theorizing into their professional work"--

The problem of cooperation is one of the core issues in sociology and social science more in general. The key question is how humans, groups, organizations, institutions, and countries can avoid or overcome the collective good dilemmas that could lead to a Hobbesian "war of all against all". The chapters in this book provide state of the art examples of research on this crucial topic. These include theoretical, laboratory, and field studies on trust and cooperation, thereby approaching the issue in three complementary and synergetic ways. The theoretical work covers articles on trust and control, reputation formation, and paradigmatic articles on the benefits and caveats of abstracting reality into models. The laboratory studies test the implications of different models of trust and reputation, such as the effects of social and institutional embeddedness and the potentially emerging inequalities this may cause. The field studies test these implications in applied settings such as business purchasing and supply, informal care, and different kinds of collaboration networks. This book is exemplary for rigorous social science. The focus is on effects of social conditions, in particular different forms of social and institutional embeddedness, on social outcomes at the macro level. Modelling efforts are applied to connect social conditions to social outcomes through micro-level behavior in ways that are easily overlooked when argumentation is intuitive and impressionistic. The book sets forth a mixed-method approach by applying different empirical methods to test hypotheses about similar questions. Several contributions re-evaluate the theoretical strengths and weaknesses following from the laboratory and field studies. Improving the theory in light of these findings facilitates pushing the boundaries of social science .