Chinese and American researchers have revealed the surprising benefits of gossip on the evolution of individuals.
- People are more likely to gossip because they want to protect their own reputation and avoid being victims of rumors.
- Gossip is useful for spreading information about people’s reputations.
- This can help the recipients of these rumors to change their behavior and not act selfishly.
“From Mesopotamian cities to industrialized nations, gossip, that is to say the exchange of personal information about absent third parties, has always been at the heart of the bonds between human beings. (…) One person spends on average an hour a day talking about others, which wastes a lot of time in our daily lives.” This is what scientists from the universities of Stanford and Maryland (United States) as well as Hong Kong (China) wrote in a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Gossip to protect your reputation and avoid being a victim of rumors
In this work, the team revealed that gossip can be beneficial to social circles. Before arriving at this observation, she asked herself a question: how did gossip become such a popular pastime that transcends gender, age, culture and social condition? To answer this, the authors used a game theory model that mimics human decision-making. By combining them with principles of evolutionary biology, they were able to observe how their agents interacted with each other and modified their strategies to obtain rewards. In this case, the researchers wanted to know whether agents would use gossip to protect themselves or to exploit others.
According to the results, officers are more likely to cooperate in the presence of a person who is gossiping, making derogatory remarks or spreading gossip, because they want to protect their own reputation and avoid being victims of rumors. “If other people are on their best behavior because they know you are gossiping, then they will be more likely to cooperate with you on certain things. The fact that you talk about others ends up giving you an advantage. This then encourages others to gossip, because they can see that it brings reward.” said Dana Nauco-author of the study.
Sharing information about others’ reputations can have a ‘deterrence of selfishness’ effect
The team also found that gossip helps spread information about people’s reputations, which has a knock-on effect. “dissuasion of selfishness”. In other words, victims of gossip condition their behavior on the reputation of others, and because they do not want to be the subject of future rumors, this deters them from acting selfishly. Through its ability to influence the behavior of others and encourage cooperation, gossip has an “evolutionary advantage” that perpetuates the gossip cycle.
“Both positive and negative gossip are important because they play an important role in sharing information about people’s reputations. Once people have this information, cooperative people can find other good people to be with cooperate, which is actually beneficial to the group. So gossip is not always a bad thing!”explained Xinyue Pan, who led the work.
In the conclusions, the scientists emphasize that their research does not encompass all of human complexity, nor can it replace behavioral studies.
