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Worried about gossip? It could influence generosity
Worried about what people are saying about you? Concerns about gossip could influence behavior, including generosity, researchers said.
Worried about what people are saying about you? Concerns about gossip could influence behavior, including generosity, researchers said.
"As it turns out, the act of gossip can indeed be quite powerful," said Jared Piazza of Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Piazza and Jesse M. Beringa studied the reactions of 72 college students who were asked to distribute tokens with a monetary value between themselves and someone else.
Half of the group were also told their decision would be discussed with a third party.
"Participants who were told that the receiver would be communicating their economic decision with the third party were significantly more generous in their allocations of the tokens than participants who were not led to believe that their decisions would be discussed," Piazza and Beringa said in the study published in the journal Human Behavior.
They added that the most beneficial strategy from an economic standpoint would have been for a student to allocate all 10 tokens to him or herself, but the threat of gossip seemed to have swayed their decision.
Although gender did not play a major role in the study, men were slightly more generous than women.
"Allocations of males were, on average, slightly greater than allocations of females, although there were almost twice as many female participants," the researchers added.
A previous study showed that gossip is more powerful than truth, suggesting people believe what they hear through the grapevine even if they have evidence to the contrary.
在意别人对你的看法？研究人员日前称，在意别人的流言蜚语会影响你的行为，包括你的慷慨程度。
北爱尔兰贝尔法斯特皇后大学的加里德·匹亚泽说：“事实证明，流言的力量的确很强大。”
匹亚泽和杰西·M·贝林格让72名大学生给自己和其他人分发标有货币价值的的代币，并对他们的具体做法进行了研究。
此外，这些大学生中还有一半人被告知他们的分配结果会被第三个人知道。
该研究报告在《人类行为》期刊中发表。匹亚泽和贝林格指出：“得知分配结果会被第三人知道的人比那些未被告知的人明显要慷慨得多。”
研究人员还提到，从经济角度考虑，最有利的分配策略是把所有10个代币都留给自己，但对于流言的畏惧似乎影响了他们的决定。
尽管性别差异不是该项研究的重点，但男性比女性还是要略微慷慨一些。
研究人员说：“尽管参与该研究的女性数量为男性的近两倍，但平均来看，男性分给别人的代币还是要略多于女性，”
此前的一项研究表明，流言比事实更具“威力”。即使人们掌握了事实依据, 他们还是更易相信与事实不符的小道消息。
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