Men reported more likelihood of transmitting negative gossip than women, contrary to widespread perception that women are more indirectly aggressive; among adults, indirect aggression decreases with age, perhaps because older individuals have less need to compete for resources

Competitive gossip: the impact of domain, resource value, resource scarcity and coalitions. Nicole H. Hess and Edward H. Hagen. Royal Society Open Science, Volume 376, Issue 1838, October 4 2021. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0305

Abstract: Those with better reputations often obtain more resources than those with poorer reputations. Consequently, gossip might be an evolved strategy to compete for valuable and scarce material and social resources. Influenced by models of non-human primate competition, we test the hypotheses that gossip: (i) targets aspects of reputation relevant to the domain in which the competition is occurring, (ii) increases when contested resources are more valuable, and (iii) increases when resources are scarcer. We then test hypotheses derived from informational warfare theory, which proposes that coalitions strategically collect, analyse and disseminate gossip. Specifically, we test whether: (iv) coalitions deter negative gossip, and (v) whether they increase expectations of reputational harm to competitors. Using experimental methods in a Mechanical Turk sample (n = 600), and survey and ego network analysis methods in a sample of California sorority women (n = 74), we found that gossip content is specific to the context of the competition; that more valuable and scarcer resources cause gossip, particularly negative gossip, to intensify; and that allies deter negative gossip and increase expectations of reputational harm to an adversary. These results support social competition theories of gossip.