The Jewish tradition is to gossip (Rashon Hara, or “name-calling”), is treated as a major sin even if the negative comment is true. Israel Meir Kagan, a 19th century Polish rabbi who became known as Chafetz Chaim, published a book about the harm caused by defaming others.
In Ramban (Maimonides), narration refers to statements that, when spread from one person to another, can harm someone’s property or body, or even frighten or annoy someone. Masu. This prohibition is found in Exodus and Leviticus, and some commentators consider gossip to be a violation of the Torah’s commandment to “remember what God did to Miriam.” . Miriam is the sister of Moses who contracted leprosy because he spoke ill of her brother.
But U.S. scientific researchers say those who spread rumors and detractors are being “devastated.” A theoretical study conducted at the University of Maryland and Stanford University in California suggests that gossip isn’t all that bad and may actually be “good for your social circle.”
From the cities of Mesopotamia to the developed world, gossip has been central to human group bonding, but it has been fiercely opposed by Jewish law. However, the evolution of gossip remains a mystery. 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 people want to know if someone is a good person to interact with, if they can get information from gossip, assuming that information is honest, that can be very informative.” “It’s possible,” said the study co-author. (Emeritus) Dana Nau, Department of Computer Science, University of Maryland.
Researchers used computer simulation to investigate the phenomenon of gossip
In their study, just published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Titled “Explaining the Evolution of Gossip,” the researchers used computer simulations to solve a long-standing mystery in social psychology. The question was: How did gossip evolve into a popular pastime that transcends gender, age, culture, and socio-economic background?
“One past study showed that people spend an average of one hour per day talking about others, which takes up a lot of time from our daily lives. ” said psychologist Xinyue Pan, lead author of the study and published part of the paper. Master’s thesis research. “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 Michelle Gelfand, professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford Business School. “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 gossiper 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 outcomes 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 explains. did. “The fact that you gossip ends up benefiting you as a gossiper. Then other people will find it rewarding too, so they won’t gossip. Become.”
Gossip recipients act on the reputation of others, research reveals
Researchers argue that gossip proliferates because sharing information about people’s reputations can have a “deterrence of self-interest” 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 the content, gossip has a beneficial function. Both positive and negative gossip are important because gossip plays an important role in sharing information about people’s reputations.” said Pan, an assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “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 isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s a positive It might be something.”
“Consistent with research on rural areas, this model highlights situations in which we would expect more gossip to occur, especially when social network connectivity is high and mobility is low.” Fund said. “It gives us a clue as to the circumstances in which gossip may be more or less prevalent.”
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 a person’s reputation. I’m thinking of moving forward. “For me, that’s one of the really exciting parts of this,” Nau concluded. “If you can formulate a hypothesis and then test that model’s predictions in human studies, that’s where this kind of thing becomes useful. Given the overwhelming number of gossipers in their simulations and in real life, gossip is unlikely to go away anytime soon.”
