STUDY: Gossiping Has Positive Effect on Society... -
Coventional wisdom holds that gossip and social exclusion are always malicious, undermining trust and morale in groups. But sharing this kind of "reputational information" could have benefits for society, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Robb Willer, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University, explored the nature of gossip and ostracism in collaboration with co-authors Matthew Feinberg, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, and Michael Schultz from the University of California-Berkeley.
Their research shows that gossip and ostracism can have positive effects, serving as tools by which groups reform bullies, thwart exploitation of "nice people," and encourage cooperation.
"Groups that allow their members to gossip," said Feinberg, "sustain cooperation and deter selfishness better than those that don't. And groups do even better if they can gossip and ostracize untrustworthy members. While both of these behaviors can be misused, our findings suggest that they also serve very important functions for groups and society."
The researchers divided 216 participants into groups, asking them to play a game and make financial choices that would benefit their respective groups.
Researchers commonly use this public-goods exercise to examine social dilemmas because individual participants will benefit the most by selfishly free-riding off everyone else's contributions while contributing nothing themselves.
Before moving on to the next round with an entirely new group, participants could gossip about their prior group members. Future group members then received that information and could decide to exclude -- ostracize -- a suspect participant from the group before deciding to make their next financial choices.
Read more -
Coventional wisdom holds that gossip and social exclusion are always malicious, undermining trust and morale in groups. But sharing this kind of "reputational information" could have benefits for society, according to a new study published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Robb Willer, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford University, explored the nature of gossip and ostracism in collaboration with co-authors Matthew Feinberg, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford, and Michael Schultz from the University of California-Berkeley.
Their research shows that gossip and ostracism can have positive effects, serving as tools by which groups reform bullies, thwart exploitation of "nice people," and encourage cooperation.
"Groups that allow their members to gossip," said Feinberg, "sustain cooperation and deter selfishness better than those that don't. And groups do even better if they can gossip and ostracize untrustworthy members. While both of these behaviors can be misused, our findings suggest that they also serve very important functions for groups and society."
The researchers divided 216 participants into groups, asking them to play a game and make financial choices that would benefit their respective groups.
Researchers commonly use this public-goods exercise to examine social dilemmas because individual participants will benefit the most by selfishly free-riding off everyone else's contributions while contributing nothing themselves.
Before moving on to the next round with an entirely new group, participants could gossip about their prior group members. Future group members then received that information and could decide to exclude -- ostracize -- a suspect participant from the group before deciding to make their next financial choices.
Read more -
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140127193852.htm
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