How children make decisions on whether to trust gossip

What is it about?

Children begin gossiping at the young age of 5, but do they recognize that gossipers can provide biased information about others? Our study showed that, by the age of 9, children consider (1) whether the content of gossip is positive or negative and (2) the relationship between the gossipers and target when deciding whether to trust gossip. When the gossipers and target were from different groups, children were less likely to trust negative than positive gossip.

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Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash

Photo by Vitolda Klein on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Gossip is a ubiquitous feature of human communication. It serves important social functions to learn about others especially when first-hand experience is limited in larger groups. However, information shared via gossip may be motivated by personal gain. This creates a "conflict of interest", in which gossip is used as a tool to serve an agenda rather than provide objective truth, such as undermining rivals and bolstering allies. Children’s ability to recognize these potential conflicting intent is crucial to understanding how they evaluate the reliability of gossip within and between groups.