Can’t stand gossip?New research suggests saying bad things about others is ‘not necessarily a bad thing’

Gossippers, gossipers, meddlers, whatever you want to call them, get a bad rap. But a new theoretical study by researchers at the University of Maryland and Stanford University argues that gossipers aren’t all that bad. In fact, it may even be good for your social circle.

Gossip, defined as the exchange of personal information about absent third parties, can have “social benefits”, researchers say. Their research shows that gossip is good at disseminating information about people’s reputations, helping recipients of that information connect with supportive people while avoiding selfish ones.

“When you want to know if someone is a good person to interact with, if you can get that information from gossip (assuming that information is honest),” said study co-author Dana Now. That could be very beneficial.” He is a retired Professor of Computer Science and Systems Research at UMD.

In a study published on February 20, 2024, Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesResearchers used computer simulations to solve a long-standing mystery in social psychology. “How did gossip evolve into a popular pastime that transcends gender, age, culture, and socio-economic background?”

“One previous study showed that people spend an average of one hour per day talking about others, which takes a lot of time out of our daily lives.” , said Dr. Xinyue Pan, lead author of the study. He describes this research in his master’s thesis. “That’s why it’s important to learn it.”

Previous theories suggested that gossip could bond large groups of people and foster cooperation, but it was unclear what individual gossipers gained from these interactions. .

“This was a real mystery,” said study co-author Michele Gelfand, a professor at Stanford Business School and professor emeritus in the UMD Department of Psychology. “It’s unclear why gossip, which requires considerable time and energy, evolved as an adaptive strategy in the first place.”

It remains unexplained why recipients of gossip are willing to give a sympathetic ear to the gossipers or act differently in front of them.

To better understand the complex web of gossip, the research team used an evolutionary game theory model that mimics human decision-making. By combining the tenets of evolutionary biology and game theory, the researchers were able to observe how agents, or hypothetical objects of study, interact and change strategies to receive rewards.

In this case, the researchers wanted to find out whether agents use gossip to protect themselves or to exploit others. Agents may cooperate with or betray the gossiper. They can become gossips themselves. And they can change their strategies after observing the consequences and rewards of other agents’ decisions. By the end of the simulation, 90% of the agents’ girlfriends were gossipers.

The researchers argued that people are more likely to cooperate in the presence of known gossipers because they want to protect their reputations and avoid becoming victims of rumors. For gossipers, receiving the cooperation of others can be a reward in itself.

“If you’re trying to be on your best behavior because other people know you’re gossiping, they’re more likely to cooperate with you on things,” Nau says. explained. “The fact that you gossip ends up benefiting you as the gossiper, and then other people will gossip too because they know it brings rewards. Masu.”

Researchers argue that gossip proliferates because sharing information about people’s reputations can have a “selfish deterrent” effect on the recipients of the gossip. In other words, recipients of gossip condition their behavior on others’ reputations and are discouraged from selfish behavior because they do not want to be the subject of gossip in the future. Thanks to their ability to influence the behavior of others and encourage cooperation, gossipers have an “evolutionary advantage” that perpetuates the gossip cycle and provides a beneficial service to their listeners.

Although gossip has a negative connotation, Pan emphasized that the information shared by gossipers can be complementary. Regardless of its content, gossip has a useful function.

“Both positive and negative gossip are important because gossip plays an important role in sharing information about people’s reputations,” said Pan, now an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen. “When people have this information, cooperative people can find other good people to cooperate with, and this is actually beneficial to the group. So gossip is not necessarily a bad thing. It can also be a good thing.”

Their simulation also considered various factors that help or hinder the spread of gossip, ultimately confirming what past research had shown. In other words, small-town gossip isn’t just a movie metaphor.

“Consistent with research on rural areas, this model highlights situations in which more gossip is expected to occur, especially when social network connectivity is high and mobility is low,” Gelfand said. he said. “It gives us a clue as to the context in which gossip can be more or less prevalent.”

Nau explained that their research does not cover the full range of human complexity, nor can it replace behavioral research. However, his computer simulations may yield new theories that may prompt follow-up studies in humans.

“Humans are so complex that we can’t and don’t want to come up with a simulation that does everything a human does,” Nau said. “This is an oversimplification, so we can’t say conclusively that this is how people behave, but we can develop insights. They can then be developed through studies involving human participants. It can lead to scientific hypotheses that can be investigated.”

The researchers conducted a follow-up study to test one of the simulation’s predictions on human participants: the idea that gossip is effective in the absence of other ways to gather information about people’s reputations. I am thinking of moving forward with this.

“For me, that’s one of the really exciting parts of this,” Nau said. “If you can formulate a hypothesis and then test the predictions of that model in human studies, that’s what makes this kind of thing useful.”

There’s one thing researchers can already say with confidence. That said, based on the overwhelming number of gossipers in simulations and real life, gossip is unlikely to go away anytime soon.