Research has shown that women engage in strategic manipulation of others’ reputations. For example, women are more likely to spread negative information about another woman’s sexual promiscuity when that woman is characterized as a potential mating rival than when she is not described as a potential mating rival. Here, we describe two experiments (N=837, N=1105) on reputation manipulation among men as well as among women. In the experiments, participants reported their likelihood of sharing reputation-enhancing and reputation-harming information about a same-sex newcomer. For half of participants, the same-sex newcomer was described as attractive and flirting with their romantic partner (i.e., a mating rival). In Experiment 1, women were more likely to share information designed to harm women’s reputation when the newcomer was described as a potential mating rival; however, men were more likely to share that information, too. In Experiment 2, women but not men were more likely to share information designed to harm women’s reputations when the newcomer was described as a mating rival. Both men and women were more likely to share information designed to harm men’s reputation when the newcomer was described as a mating rival. We discuss consistent and inconsistent findings between the two experiments.
