Dear Friends:
Today's (19 01 2012) Telegraph,UK, reports the news above. I reproduce it below
minus the picture accompanying.
Gossip is healthy because it helps calm you down and is important in
maintaining social oreder, a new study claims.
By Nick Collins, Science Correspondent
3:44PM GMT 18 Jan 2012
8 Comments
Idle chatter in the workplace or over a coffee is often viewed as a damaging
habit which spreads salacious rumours and harms people's reputations.
But new research suggests gossip could actually lower stress and help people
overcome the frustration of seeing someone doing something wrong and getting
away with it.
Psychologists from the University of California, Berkeley, found that
volunteers' heart rates rose when they observed someone misbehaving, but that
this stopped when they were allowed to discuss what they had seen with others.
The study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
focused on "prosocial" gossip which helps spread information about dishonest
people rather than voyeuristic chatter about celebrities' love lives, the
researchers said.
In a trial designed to determine how strong our urge is to spread gossip, some
participants even said they would spend money in order to to send a note
warning others about people they had seen cheating in a trust exercise.
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Prof Robb Willer, one of the researchers, said: "Spreading information about
the person whom they had seen behave badly tended to make people feel better,
quieting the frustration that drove their gossip."
The study also showed that passing on rumours could help us monitor people who
behave badly and prevent each other from being exploited by malicious
individuals, Prof Willer added.
In an online trust game where players could lower their chances of winning by
warning others about cheaters, the threat of being the subject of bad gossip
encouraged people to play more fairly
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