Feinberg et al. behavior of the rest of the group.Thus,our results show social-dilemmas perspective of responses to ostracism how gossip,when paired with a mechanism for partner selection,can foster an I sustain high levels of coopera- 200 This perspective holds thataner esclu- Kamdar,2000 with research showing that gossip alone produces cooperation,because contri- by behaving more selfishly out of spite.But,in the lon butions in the gossip game gradually decreased.This run,they benefit most by conforming to group expecta past research,however show tions,especially when punishment has significant reper n0 U: n gossip game than in the basic game.Gossip alone likely ou tosi abouingkindt eaming nothing at all-the dominant incentive was to that others reputation withhold retaliation and.instead,cooperate. (WI 2010. Author Contributions defecting when future partners will know what you did will lead these partners to not cooperate with you,which reduces the incentive to defect in the first place.However. tain high levels of en t to ma西 case hecause exno ossip about a low contributor manuscript from a prior round also stimulates fears of exploitation which could resu in reduced contribution to avoid Acknowledgments odels of biological n iDyandpr reputation or "market value when partner Declaration of Conflicting Interests Bar lay,2013:Noe Hammersteir 195).As ex he present research,reputa Further,models of biological markets contend that indi Funding viduals often compete to demonstrate their value as a part. an Xlab Grant from the Haas School of Business at the Universi raged in such petitive altruism(Roberts,1998),vying to be more proso Stanford University. 品mie me下aoid e Supplemental Material ostracism game.Moreover.these competitive pressures to om/content/by/suppleme Note Finally.our results add to the literature on how indi- ers tests ather than ANOVAs to analy viduals respond to ostracism.Whereas some research has sho that ost acized individuals Results remained significant in these analyses ality (e.g., Ciarocco.Bartels,2007).our finding that ostracized References individuals behaved as cooperatively as everyone (2013).Ostracism and prosocia else upon returning to their groups fits well with a8 Feinberg et al. behavior of the rest of the group. Thus, our results show how gossip, when paired with a mechanism for partner selection, can foster and sustain high levels of coopera￾tion even in noniterated interactions. Our results may seem at odds with research showing that gossip alone produces cooperation, because contri￾butions in the gossip game gradually decreased. This past research, however, showed that the threat of gossip, relative to a control, deters selfish behavior, a finding our results replicated: Participants cooperated more in the gossip game than in the basic game. Gossip alone likely promotes cooperation because gossiping and knowing that others could gossip about you makes reputation salient, which tends to foster prosociality (Willer, Feinberg, Irwin, Schultz, & Simpson, 2010), and because defecting when future partners will know what you did will lead these partners to not cooperate with you, which reduces the incentive to defect in the first place. However, these forces, over the long run, were insufficient to main￾tain high levels of cooperation. This may have been the case because exposure to gossip about a low contributor from a prior round also stimulates fears of exploitation, which could result in reduced contribution to avoid exploitation (Kuwabara, 2005). Our findings fit well with models of biological markets, which argue that individuals will choose partners based on others’ reputation or “market value” when partner selection is possible (Barclay, 2013; Noë & Hammerstein, 1995). As exemplified in the present research, reputational information obtained through gossip greatly expands the breadth of individuals’ knowledge of others’ past behavior. Further, models of biological markets contend that indi￾viduals often compete to demonstrate their value as a part￾ner. In the present research, because having the lowest market value of the group led to the highest likelihood of being ostracized, participants likely engaged in such “com￾petitive altruism” (Roberts, 1998), vying to be more proso￾cial than the other group members to avoid exclusion. In such a dynamic, the standard for avoiding ostracism escalates, which further explains why contributions con￾tinually increased across the rounds of the gossip-with￾ostracism game. Moreover, these competitive pressures to cooperate would likely have been even greater had we allowed group members not only to exclude individuals, but also to select partners for inclusion—an important topic for future research. Finally, our results add to the literature on how indi￾viduals respond to ostracism. Whereas some research has shown that ostracized individuals respond to exclu￾sion with decreased prosociality (e.g., Mulder, van Dijk, De Cremer, & Wilke, 2006; Twenge, Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Bartels, 2007), our finding that ostracized individuals behaved as cooperatively as everyone else upon returning to their groups fits well with a social-dilemmas perspective of responses to ostracism (Balliet & Ferris, 2013; Joireman, Daniels, George-Falvy, & Kamdar, 2006). This perspective holds that after exclu￾sion, individuals face competing incentives: They are tempted in the short run to respond negatively, possibly by behaving more selfishly out of spite. But, in the long run, they benefit most by conforming to group expecta￾tions, especially when punishment has significant reper￾cussions (Tenbrunsel & Messick, 1999; van Lange, Joireman, Parks, & van Dijk, 2013). In the present study, because ostracized participants faced heavy punishment— earning nothing at all—the dominant incentive was to withhold retaliation and, instead, cooperate. Author Contributions M. Feinberg and R. Willer developed the research idea and design. M. Feinberg conducted the analyses with the assistance of R. Willer and statistics consultants. M. Schultz helped with the computer programming and helped M. Feinberg conduct the study sessions. M. Feinberg and R. Willer wrote the manuscript. Acknowledgments We would like to thank James Doty and Emma Seppala for their support. Declaration of Conflicting Interests The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article. Funding This research was funded by a National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellowship awarded to M. Feinberg, an Xlab Grant from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and postdoctoral funding from the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University. Supplemental Material Additional supporting information may be found at http://pss .sagepub.com/content/by/supplemental-data Note 1. Because of the potentially nonnormal distribution of con￾tribution amounts in the public-goods game, some research￾ers use nonparametric tests rather than ANOVAs to analyze results. In the Nonparametric Tests section of the Supplemental Material, we describe alternative nonparametric analyses. Results remained significant in these analyses. References Balliet, D., & Ferris, D. L. (2013). Ostracism and prosocial behavior: A social dilemma perspective. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 120, 298–308. Downloaded from pss.sagepub.com by Cai Xing on February 13, 2014