La Vita è Bella Life is Beautiful. La Vita es Bonita. 美麗人生　

242愛的鼓勵 7訂閱站台

流言與閒言言語是語言發展的原因。流言也是人類從人猿進化的一大步，使人類可以和平地過著群體生活，發展出道德規範，建立文明，並販售超商裡的八卦雜誌。

德國與奧地利的學者透過實驗來檢視傳言對人的影響，請參閱以下紐約時報的報導。實驗的結果真是教人沮喪，傳言或流言隊人的影響力超越事實；即便散佈流言的人，本身的可信度不高時，這流言對人的影響力仍是十分可觀。雖說「人是理性的動物」但是這理性並沒有主宰人類的行為。看來亞里斯多德在說這句話時，應該多少多有些期勉與鼓勵的心情。

我以前在跨國公司上班時，曾有一位主管每天都要打電話給不同分公司的業務主管或中堅幹部，內容不外是說：自己現在又在和某某客戶談生意，台灣的商業環境多競爭，他每天被客戶煩得要死，客戶有多不講理，總公司給的營業目標太嚴苛，為了開拓業務他有有麼忙碌，電話接不完，不停出差；若對方職位或年資比他低，他就作種種商情分析，給予指導，及策略與行動計畫...等等。當我到總公司或別的分公司開會時，別人常會說：「你們真好，有這樣一位主管。」「你們主管好厲害啊，跟在他身邊，應該學到不少東西。」就是因為這麼厲害，這麼忙，所以每個月的業績檢討會，他總要去出差；他給的指導就像是在讀企管課本或管理的雜誌一般，有許多流行的語彙，stragtegy, synergy,...但與主管應做的決策，或與我們遇到的問題，與我們的處境一點關係都沒有。

總是抱怨總公司給的營業目標太嚴苛，但是到總公司開會時，卻一句話也不吭。甚至經常有兩個會議時間衝突，以致無法出席與預算和業績檢討有關的會議。一但躲過制度化的會議，事後再與負責人協商，不但壓力頓失，他平日所散佈的種種傳言，也會成為一股助力。或許這才是組織／社會運作的真面目。

留言或傳言，不僅僅是一般所理解的用來中傷他人，還可以用來自我吹捧。

剛進入社會的前幾年，有一個客戶問我的主管有沒有獲得升遷，當時的主管表現很好，我想客戶也看在眼裏。主管說沒有，並請他在老闆前多美言幾句。客戶告訴他，你應該要自己升(遷) “You gotta do self-promotion!”一向幽默的主管答道：「在名片上直接印上副總嗎？」在場每個人都呵呵大笑。

十年過去了，現在回想那位老美所說的”Self-promotion”應該是指「自我吹捧」吧。主管的英語比我強多了，是他一時沒想到呢？還是因為個性就做不來，所以發揮一貫幽默的本領，把氣氛弄得很融洽？看樣子「自我吹捧」在一個組織裏還很重要呢！畢竟人無法看清事實，並傾向倚賴傳言。

Findings
Facts Prove No Match for Gossip, It Seems

By JOHN TIERNEY
October 16, 2009

Until now, I was firmly pro-gossip. I welcomed the theory that gossip was the reason language developed. I cheered on researchers who believed gossip was the great evolutionary leap that enabled human apes to live peacefully in large groups, develop moral codes, build civilizations and, eventually, sell supermarket tabloids.

But now I wonder if we’ve leaped too far, and it’s not because I’ve been watching “Gossip Girl.” In a paper on gossip published yesterday, evolutionary biologists in Germany and Austria have identified a vulnerability that might be called the Chico Marx Paradox, for reasons that will be clear once you hear about this experiment.

The researchers set out to test the power of gossip, which has been exalted by theorists in recent decades. Language, according to the anthropologist Robin Dunbar, evolved because gossip is a more efficient version of the “social grooming” essential for animals to live in groups.

Apes and other creatures solidify their social bonds by cleaning and stroking one another, but the size of the group is limited because there’s not enough time in the day to groom a large number of animals.

Speech enabled humans to bond with lots of people while going about their hunting and gathering. Instead of spending hours untangling hair, they could bond with friendly conversation (“Your hair looks so unmatted today!”) or by picking apart someone else’s behavior (“Yeah, he was supposed to share the wildebeest, but I heard he kept both haunches”).

Gossip also told people whom to trust, and the prospect of a bad reputation discouraged them from acting selfishly, so large groups could peacefully cooperate. At least, that was the theory: gossip promoted the “indirect reciprocity” that made human society possible.


To test it, researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology and the University of Vienna gave 10 Euros apiece to 126 students and had them play a game that put them in a dilemma. On each turn, the players would be paired off, and one of them was offered a chance to give 1.25 Euros to the other. If he agreed, the researchers added a bonus of .75 Euro so that the recipient ended up gaining 2 Euros.

If the first player refused to give the money, he’d save 1.25 Euros, but if others found out about his miserliness they might later withhold money from him. As the game progressed, with the players changing partners frequently and alternating between the donor and recipient roles, the players were given information about their partners’ past decisions.

Sometimes the donor was shown a record of what the partner had done previously while playing the donor role. The more generous this partner had earlier been toward other players, the more likely the donor was to give him something.

Sometimes the donor was shown gossip about the partner from another player. When the partner was paid a compliment like “spendabler spieler!” — generous player! — the donor was more likely to give money. But the donor turned stingy when he saw gossip like “übler geizkragen” — nasty miser.

So far, so good. As predicted, gossip promoted indirect reciprocity. The research, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that most people passed on accurate gossip and used it for the common good. They rewarded cooperative behavior even when they themselves weren’t directly affected by the behavior.

If a cooperation game like this was played without consequences for the players’ reputations — as has been done in other experiments — most players would be miserly, and cooperation would collapse. In this experiment they were generous most of the time, and on average ended up with twice as much money as they had at the beginning of the game.

But here’s the disconcerting news from the experiment. In a couple of rounds, each donor was given both hard facts and gossip. He was given a record of how his partner had behaved previously as well as some gossip — positive gossip in one round, negative in another.


The donor was told that the source of the gossip didn’t have any extra information beyond what the donor could already see for himself. Yet the gossip, whether positive or negative, still had a big influence on the donors’ decisions, and it didn’t even matter if the source of the gossip had a good reputation himself. On average, cooperation increased by about 20 percent if the gossip was good, and fell by 20 percent if the gossip was negative.

Now, you might think the gossip mattered just in borderline cases — when the partner had a mixed record of generosity, and the donor welcomed outside guidance in making a tough decision. But the gossip had an impact in other situations, too. Even when a player saw that his partner had a record of consistent meanness, he could be swayed by positive gossip to reward the partner anyway. Or withhold help from a perfectly nice partner just on the basis of malicious buzz.

This result may come as no shock to fans of “Gossip Girl,” or to publicists trying to plant items in Page Six about the charitable works of despicable clients. But it seemed surprising to the researchers, according to the lead author, Ralf D. Sommerfeld of the Max Planck Institute.


“If you know you already have the full information about someone,” he said, “rationally you shouldn’t care so much what someone else says.”

So why do we? “It could be,” he suggested, “that we are just more adapted to listen to other information than to observe people, because most of the time we’re not able to observe how other people are behaving. Thus we might believe we have missed something.”

This makes a certain sense, but I still wonder if evolution has taken a Chico Marxist turn here. In “Duck Soup,” Chico tries to pass himself off as Groucho’s character, complete with moustache and cigar, but encounters a skeptical Margaret Dumont, who protests that she just saw Groucho leave the room.

“Well, who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?” Chico asks.

Now, at last, we know the answer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/science/16tier.html?_r=1

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The story was taken from the New York Times.  The copyright belongs to The New York Times Company.  The author of the story and the New York Times are not involved with, nor endorse the production of this blog.


2 guys trading gossip at dinner.  (Taipei, Taiwan)            by Frank 2008.5.14