Paul Van Lange

Who they are

The work of Paul Van Lange reaches this site through the papers listed below. On this site the name is tied to Gossip, Reputation.

Key papers

Wu, J., Balliet, D., & Van Lange, P. A. M. (2016). Gossip versus punishment: The efficiency of reputation to promote and maintain cooperation. Scientific Reports, 6, 23919. What it reports: Compared gossip with punishment in a public goods game and a trust game. Gossip raised cooperation and earnings, punishment did not raise cooperation overall and lowered earnings, and people who had been in gossip groups were more trusting and trustworthy in a later game.

Dores Cruz, T. D., Thielmann, I., Columbus, S., Molho, C., Wu, J., Righetti, F., de Vries, R. E., Koutsoumpis, A., van Lange, P. A. M., Beersma, B., & Balliet, D. (2021). Gossip and reputation in everyday life. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 376(1838), 20200301. What it reports: A community sample of 309 adults recorded their daily social life for ten days, logging 5,284 episodes of gossip. Senders often shared information about how cooperative others were, receivers mostly believed it and updated their view, and better reputations went with more willingness to help the person discussed.

Key ideas

Gossip: Everyday talk about who did what, the low-cost end of norm enforcement.

Reputation: What a group collectively believes about a person's conduct, updated as people share what they have seen.

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