Poster #130 - Seven-year-olds (but not five-year-olds) utilize gossip to evaluate others

• In Event: 3-053 - Poster Session 10
  In Poster Session: PS 10 Section - Moral Development

Integrative Statement

Gossip, which is defined as evaluative information about a social agent, enables individuals to evaluate others even without directly observing their past moral behavior. Based on such evaluations, individuals decide with whom to interact, for example, choosing cooperative partners (e.g., Feinberg et al., 2014). However, it remains unclear at what age children begin to utilize gossip in this way (see Haux et al., 2017). To investigate the developmental origin of the use of gossip, we examined how 5- and 7-year-olds reward and trust others who are the targets of gossip.
In Experiment 1, we examined whether children (5 yrs: N = 32, 7 yrs: N = 32) evaluate others based on positive gossip. We showed them video about three puppets: 1) a puppet who behaved prosocially (first-hand-positive-observation condition), 2) a puppet whose prosocial behavior is gossiped about (positive-gossip condition), and 3) a puppet whose neutral behavior is gossiped about (neutral-gossip condition). The participants ranked the three puppets in order of deserved rewards and deserved trust as well as how good each puppet was using a 5-point Likert scale. We found that only 7-year-olds, not 5-year-olds, rated the two prosocial puppets more positively than one neutral puppet. Next we separately conducted ordinal regression analysis on the children’s reward and trust behaviors. Our model contained an experimental condition (first-hand-positive-observation/positive-gossip/neutral-gossip), age (five/seven), and the interaction between the experimental conditions and age (Fig. 1). Neither 5- nor 7-year-olds utilized positive gossip when they rewarded the puppets. Only the 7-year-olds tended to utilize it when they decided whom to trust, suggesting that they only utilize gossip when deciding with whom to interact.
Although the present findings demonstrated a weak impact of positive gossip on children’s behavior, previous studies indicated that negative gossip (i.e., gossip about antisocial behavior) has more impact on children’s behavior than positive gossip (e.g., Dunbar, 2004). In Experiment 2, we investigated whether 5- and 7-year-olds (each N = 32) utilize negative gossip using the same procedure as Experiment 1. We just changed the video content; the children directly observed the puppet’s antisocial behavior (first-hand-negative-observation condition) and heard gossip about the puppet’s antisocial behavior (negative-gossip condition). The video content of the neutral-gossip condition was identical to Experiment 1. As a result, both ages rated two antisocial puppets more negatively than one neutral puppet using the Likert scale. As to children’s reward and trust behaviors, the 7-year-olds utilized negative gossip, but the 5-year-olds only did so marginally (Fig. 2).
Throughout the two experiments, we found that the children’s use of gossip differed in its content; negative gossip has greater impact than positive gossip on children’s behavior at an earlier age. The results also suggest that around the age of 7, children begin to use gossip to determine with whom to interact. Our result deepens understanding of gossip’s role and how it maintains cooperation in childhood.

Authors

• Asami Shinohara, Nagoya University, JSPS, NTT Communication Science Laboratories
  Presenting Author

• Yasuhiro Kanakogi, Otemon Gakuin University, NTT Communication Science Laboratories
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yuko Okumura, NTT Communication Science Laboratories
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tessei Kobayashi, NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Nagoya University
  Non-Presenting Author