Gossiping is not the pleasantest thing to do, but if the rumors you share about someone else are based on truth, it can actually have a positive impact on our relationship with others, a new study has found.
A mathematical model of gossip - yes, you read that right - has revealed that truthful tea-spilling can improve trust between individuals. The model was compiled by Paul van Lange from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Szabolcs Számadó from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and Junhui Wu from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.
The scientists have modeled gossip as a triangle: the gossiper, the listener, and the third party - the subject of the discussion. To explore the effect of different types of gossip on human relationships, four games were used: in one scenario, the rumors were beneficial to either the gossiper or the subject of the gossip; and in the others it was beneficial to either both talkers or neither of them.
The hypothesis was quite simple, with the scientists suggesting that the gossipers would decide on whether to speak the truth or tell lies based on the goal to maximize their own benefit without damaging their reputation.
When the benefit was obvious for all parties, the gossipers would decide to tell the truth. However, when the goals were mismatched with the recipient or the subject, people would tend towards dishonesty, the experiment found.
"For example, you might be competing with a co-worker for a prized promotion, where only one of you can get the job," supporting author and meta-scientist Leo Tiokhin from Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands explained. "In such situations, people are negatively interdependent: one person's failure means the other's 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."
Basically, the research has confirmed that, moral implications aside, honesty in gossip is determined by the marginal cost or benefit resulting from honest or dishonest rumors. So it turns out that spilling tea is guided purely by mathematics.