Moral gossip targets more than fairness, tracking loyalty and norm adherence too.

Evidence

Finally, the authors recognize the importance of reputation and gossip in social selection, yet treat this as a selection “for a disposition to be fair rather than for a disposition to sacrifice oneself or for virtues such as purity or piety that are orthogonal to one’s value as a partner in most cooperative ventures” (sect. 2.2.1, para. 9). However, evidence shows that moral gossip is not relegated to fairness, but to a wider variety of virtues and vices, including how good a cooperator the person is, but also how good a family/group/congregation member they are, how well they adhere to moral and cultural norms, and whether they have the “right” upbringing, beliefs, and personality characteristics … Here again, flexibility may be the key: a wider range of moral gossip may provide valid information about cooperation in tight cultural contexts, but not in loose ones. Like disgust and individual differences, gossip is a fertile topic for which the mutualistic approach can provide novel predictions and explanations. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 436

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the Big God / partner-choice debate and to gossip’s role in costly-signaling and reputation systems across cultures. — connects to: Competitive signalling may drive moral conduct beyond mere fairness. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 526; A reputation market can value norm-following more than dispute outcomes. — Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal System, 241; Informal moral behavior builds reputation through accumulated small signals, defeating free-riding. — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality: The…, 80 (+4 more)
• ADDENDUM: Ties to the ‘On Sacrifice’ piece in that purity/piety-driven reputation concerns are moralized as group loyalty, paralleling how sacrificial norms signal belonging rather than fairness.

Related

• Competitive signalling may drive moral conduct beyond mere fairness. (similarity 0.87)
• Informal moral behavior builds reputation through accumulated small signals, defeating free-riding. (similarity 0.84)
• Reputational self-interest alone cannot explain why people act morally when unobserved. (similarity 0.83)
• A genuine moral sense evolved to secure reputation as a cooperator (similarity 0.83)
• Morality extends beyond fairness among strangers to relational obligations (similarity 0.83)
• Moral norms differ by relationship type, not by one universal strategy. (similarity 0.82)
• Moral conduct serves as a costly signal that pays in partner selection. (similarity 0.82)
• Cooperative behavior is partly motivated by reputation concerns. (similarity 0.82)
• Morality evolves from individual partner-choice competition, not group selection. (similarity 0.80)
• Morality evolved because fair partners were preferred in cooperative interactions (similarity 0.80)
• Morality evolved as a propensity for fair cost-benefit sharing among cooperators. (similarity 0.79)
• Moralistic punishment of defectors is itself a costly reputational signal. (similarity 0.79)
• Genuinely moral partners signal higher reliability than strategically moral ones. (similarity 0.79)
• Gossip is a distorted figure of a future passion for human particularity (similarity 0.79)
• Cooperation and morality are distinct categories. (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Competitive signalling may drive moral conduct beyond mere fairness. #corroborates (0.90) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 526
• Cooperative behavior is partly motivated by reputation concerns. #corroborates (0.88) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 311
• Informal moral behavior builds reputation through accumulated small signals, defeating free-riding. #corroborates (0.85) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 80
• A reputation market can value norm-following more than dispute outcomes. #corroborates (0.82) — Lisa Bernestein, Opting out of the Legal System, 241
• Morality extends beyond fairness among strangers to relational obligations #expands (0.80) — Nicolas Baumard, A mutualistic approach to morality, 333
• Costly norm enforcement by unaffected bystanders reveals strong reciprocity. #expands (0.78) — Ernst Fehr, Third-Party Punishment and Social Norms, 2