Study: People are strongly influenced by gossip even when it is explicitly untrustworthy
New research in the journal Emotion suggests that people are highly influenced by gossip, even when it is explicitly identified as untrustworthy. The findings indicate that qualifiers such as “allegedly” do little to temper the effects of negative information on a person’s likeability.
“Words and phrases like ‘apparently’, ‘allegedly’ or ‘is suspected of’ are frequently used in daily communication, in social media and in media coverage about people, in order to signify the questionable veracity of information. These terms even serve a legal purpose and are intended to prevent false accusations, prejudgments and defamations,” said study author Julia Baum of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and Berlin School of Mind and Brain.
“Until now, however, little has been known about how our brain processes verbally communicated person-related information of dubious reliability and how this affects our...