Media release

From: The Royal Society

Playground politics – Children rely on multiple sources to verify positive gossip, but a single negative rumour can sway them. A group of 108 seven-year olds heard positive, neutral or negative gossip from a group of puppets, before allocating sticker rewards to the subject. Positive gossip from multiple informants impacted reward choice, but not when it was just one positive source. However, children acted on negative gossip, whether it was from one source or multiple. Royal Society Open Science.

Children are sensitive to number of sources when relying on gossip

Royal Society Open Science

This study investigated whether 7-year-olds would be sensitive to the number of gossip sources when trusting it. The children received multiple pieces of positive/negative gossip about one agent and neutral gossip about another agent from either single or multiple informants. Then they allocated rewards to and chose rewards from the gossip targets. The 7-year-olds acted upon positive gossip from multiple informants but not from a single informant. In contrast, they relied on negative gossip regardless of the number of informants but were more likely to trust negative gossip from multiple informants. This result indicates they are sensitive to an objective index for judging gossip veracity.