Gossip: A force for good?
We usually frown on gossip, but sharing honest information about others – even if it is behind their back – can help people to cooperate better, according to a recent study supported in part by the EU-funded FORCE-OF-GOSSIP project. The research is described in ‘Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences’. In this study, the researchers sought to answer the question: When are people likely to share honest or dishonest gossip? To this end, they built a model – comprising a gossiper, the recipient of the gossip and the person being talked about – to provide a theoretical foundation for people’s gossip strategies. “Of course, as with any model, we needed to make simplifications,” remarks study co-author Dr Leo Tiokhin from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, in a news item posted on the university’s website. “For example, our model assumed that the gossiper always knew whether the target of the gossip was cooperative or uncooperative. It also assumed that the recipient of gossip would always trust gossip that they received. These assumptions were made for tractability, and they could certainly be modified in future extensions of our work.”
Playing the gossip game
The team used a novel approach involving four games to model four distinct outcomes of honest gossip for the recipient of the gossip and the target. The outcomes were mutually beneficial, beneficial only for the recipient while being costly for the target (or vice versa), or costly for both. As reported in the news item, the results were consistent across all four games. The research shows that gossipers used a simple “matching rule” to decide whether to share honest or dishonest information. Where there was a strong match between the effect of honest gossip and how much gossipers valued the recipient and target, gossipers tended be honest. However, in situations with a strong mismatch between these two aspects, gossipers were much more likely to lie. In a workplace setting, this can be interpreted as follows. When co-workers rely on one another to achieve a shared goal and success benefits everyone, then gossip is more likely to be honest if it benefits the team and dishonest if it harms it. “On the other hand, there are other situations where people are not positively interdependent,” notes Dr Tiokhin. “For example, you may be competing with a co-worker for a prized promotion, where only one of you can get the job. In such situations, people are negatively interdependent: one person’s failure means the others’ success. Such situations can be expected to lead to dishonest gossip to harm co-workers, or honest gossip when the content of the gossip is already negative.” FORCE-OF-GOSSIP (The unknown force: How gossip shapes the functioning and performance of organizational groups.) aims to radically change the field of gossip research. The project ends in February 2024. For more information, please see: FORCE-OF-GOSSIP project
Keywords
FORCE-OF-GOSSIP, gossip, honest, dishonest, gossiper, cooperation
