Department of Organizational Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam, 1081HV, The Netherlands.
GELIEF, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 7, Groningen, 9747AG, The Netherlands.
Sci Rep. 2022 Mar 21;12(1):4790. doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-08670-7.
Humans are often shown to cooperate with one another. Most of the mechanisms that foster cooperation among humans rely on reputation, which itself relies on the acquisition of information about other people's behaviors. Gossip has been proposed as a cheap yet efficient tool to acquire information, and it has largely been proved to be an effective means to foster and maintain cooperation. However, empirical studies supporting this claim have ignored two aspects: (1) they often compared gossip to treatments in which no reputation was available, impeding a direct assessment of whether it is gossip that promotes cooperation or rather the introduction of a reputation system; and (2) they focused on pro-social gossip (e.g., gossip aimed at helping the receiver), neglecting the impact of other types of gossip. We show here that, in contrast with the widespread notion that gossip promotes cooperation, gossip mostly depletes cooperation compared to first-hand information. If lying is fruitful for individuals or if a group's behavior is largely uncooperative, gossip leads to negative reputational information and decreased cooperation.
人类经常表现出相互合作的行为。大多数促进人类合作的机制都依赖于声誉，而声誉本身则依赖于获取他人行为信息。传闻被认为是一种廉价而有效的获取信息的工具，并且在很大程度上已被证明是促进和维持合作的有效手段。然而，支持这一观点的实证研究忽略了两个方面：（1）它们经常将传闻与没有声誉的治疗方法进行比较，这阻碍了对促进合作的是传闻本身还是引入声誉系统的直接评估；（2）它们侧重于亲社会的传闻（例如，旨在帮助接收者的传闻），而忽略了其他类型的传闻的影响。我们在这里表明，与传闻促进合作的普遍观点相反，与第一手信息相比，传闻大多会消耗合作。如果说谎对个人有利，或者如果一个群体的行为大多是不合作的，那么传闻会导致负面的声誉信息和合作减少。
