Summary: | 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.
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