How the Grapevine Keeps You in Line: Gossip Increases Contributions to the Group
From Social Psychological and Personality Science
Gossip can be hurtful, unproductive, and mean. It can also be an important part of making sure that people will share and cooperate. Researchers set out to test whether the threat of gossip could suppress selfish behavior. To do so, they brought people into the lab and told them they had been randomly chosen to distribute 100 tickets for a cash-prize lottery. With the task, people could be generous and distribute the tickets to group members, or they could be selfish, and keep a large share of the tickets for themselves. Half of the time, the person was told that the choice would be kept private—none of the other group members would know how many tickets went into their personal account. The rest of the time, people expected that their group members would know exactly how many tickets they kept for themselves. Sometimes the participants were told that other group members were prone to gossip and sometimes they were told the other group members were quite unlikely to gossip. Findings of this study reveal that when their actions were public and the chance for gossip was high, people became substantially less selfish. When people knew that their selfishness would be on display—and very likely to be talked about—they acted most generously to others. Gossip can therefore have a positive side—the threat of gossip can increase fairness and hold selfishness in check.
Abstract
Gossip is often characterized as bad and immoral. The authors challenge this view and propose that gossip constrains self-serving behavior that harms the group. When people expect their group members to gossip and their decisions are identifiable, they will be concerned about group members’ opinions, and this should lead them to contribute more resources to the group. When people believe their group members are unlikely to gossip, identifiability of decisions should have less impact on group opinion concerns and contributions to the group. Participants were led to believe that their fellow group members had a low or high tendency to gossip, and that their contribution to the group was identifiable by the group or not. Results confirmed our hypotheses, demonstrating that gossip is a powerful tool to control self-serving behavior in groups. Indeed, the grapevine keeps group members in line. Although mostly viewed negatively, gossip may be essential for groups’ survival
Article details
Beersma, B., & Van Kleef, G. (2011). How the Grapevine Keeps You in Line: Gossip Increases Contributions to the Group Social Psychological and Personality Science DOI: 10.1177/1948550611405073
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