The Human Brain Is Too Weak for Gossip

By Neil Bearden, HBR, December 2, 2013

William Shakespeare, speaking through one of his characters in The Comedy of Errors, articulated a very important psychological insight: “Ill deeds are doubled with an evil word.” Words act as multipliers—they’re powerful. And if the Bard had wanted to give management advice, he’d certainly have warned us about the pernicious impacts of gossip in the workplace.

Gossip is evaluative talk among familiars about a third party who is not present. Surely it is a bit of stretch to characterize gossip as “evil.” Yet a number of the world’s most prominent religions and philosophies explicitly have dissuaded their adherents from engaging in the activity—sometimes even characterizing it as sinful. In Leviticus, one finds, “Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people.”

Similar remarks are found the Koran. Confucius, in The Analects, is reported to have said, “To engage in gossip and spreading of rumors is to abandon virtue.” The same sentiment appears in the writings of ancient Stoic philosophers and in modern-day self-help books. The thought is everywhere—and for good reason.

The old philosophers and sages understood instinctively what contemporary psychology is more formally demonstrating: our beliefs are not always established and maintained in the most rational ways. To begin with, when we encounter new information, there is good evidence that our mind’s default mode is first to assume it is true. Only when the receiver has sufficient motivation and time to reflect on the information, will it potentially be tagged in the memory as false. Until then it’s stored as if it were true. With gossip, that’s clearly dangerous.

Gossip becomes even more worrisome when one starts to appreciate other ways in which our mind is fallible. For instance, we sometimes mistake the source of our memories and the context in which they were encoded.

I recently told a class about my vivid recollection of the day the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. I vividly remember my elementary school gym teacher gently breaking the news to my fellow six-year-old classmates and me. After I recounted this story, one student commented that I looked rather old for my age. It turns out that the Challenger exploded in 1986 when I was twelve years old and in middle school. (It took a bit of Googling to convince me that my memory was mistaken.) You could just as easily “remember” something you overheard from the office’s arch-gossiper as coming from a truly credible source.

The multiplying effect of gossip gets more troubling when beliefs formed through it shape subsequent perceptions. Our minds attend selectively to information that supports already existing beliefs, and to discount information that goes against our beliefs. That phenomenon—confirmation bias—has been documented in countless psychological studies. (Mind you, anyone who’s witnessed discussions around contentious political issues—e.g., gun control or Obamacare—should have more than enough data to conclude that people selectively choose their “facts.”) By implanting beliefs, therefore, gossip can dangerously shape subsequent perceptions.

Gossip may provide momentary entertainment to some people. That part is clear. What is less apparent to them, I suspect, is that it also can alter their minds and hence their realities. Gossip can blow up start-ups and corrode morale in large companies. It is, as Shakespeare might say, a most calamitous evil.