Gossip is more powerful than truth, a study showed on Monday, suggesting people believe what they hear through the grapevine even if they have evidence to the contrary.

    Researchers, testing students using a computer game, also found gossip played an important role when people make decisions, said Ralf Sommerfeld, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, who led the study.

    "We show that gossip has a strong influence …… even when participants have access to the original information as well as gossip about the same information," the researchers wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

    "Thus, it is evident that gossip has a strong manipulative potential."

    In the study, the researchers gave the students money and allowed them to give it to others in a series of rounds. The students also wrote notes about how others played the game that everyone could review.

    Students tended to give less money to people described as "nasty misers" or "scrooges" and more to those depicted as "generous players" or "social players," Sommerfeld said.

    "People only saw the gossip, not the past decisions," he said in a telephone interview.

    The researchers then took the game a step further and showed the students the actual decisions people had made. But they also supplied false gossip that contradicted that evidence.

    In these cases, the students based their decisions to award money on the gossip, rather than the hard evidence, Sommerfeld said.

    "Rationally if you know what the people did, you should care, but they still listened to what others said," he said.
    
    Researchers have long used similar games to study how people cooperate and the impact of gossip in groups. Scientists define gossip as social information spread about a person who is not present, Sommerfeld said.

    In evolutionary terms, gossip can be an important tool for people to acquire information about others' reputations or navigate through social networks at work and in their everyday lives, the study said.

本周一公布的一項研究表明，流言比事實更具“威力”。即使人們掌握了事實依據, 他們還是更易相信與事實不符的小道消息。

    據德國邁克斯?普蘭克研究所負責人、進化生物學家拉爾夫?索姆費爾德介紹，研究人員借助一個電腦游戲對學生們進行測試。結果發現，流言在人們做決定的過程中起了重要作用。

    研究人員在《國家科學院院刊》的研究報告中提到：“研究發現，即便在研究對象知道了真相的情況下，流言仍有很強的影響力。”

    “由此看來，流言顯然具有很強的操縱力。”

    在試驗過程中，研究人員發給學生們一些錢并讓他們分幾輪把錢發給其他人。學生們還得記錄其他同伴在游戲中的所作所為，以供大家參考。

    索姆費爾德說，學生們傾向于發較少的錢給那些被描述為“令人討厭的守財奴”或“吝嗇鬼”的人，而發較多的錢給那些“慷慨的玩家”或“合群的玩家”。

    他在接受電話采訪時說：“人們只聽流言，而不顧之前的決定。”

    研究人員又進行了幾輪游戲，并在這幾輪中告訴大家每個人的真實決定。但研究人員同時還“散布”了一些與真實依據相矛盾的流言。

    索姆費爾德說，在這幾輪中，學生們仍然根據他們聽到的流言來決定發錢的多少，而不是根據擺在面前的事實。

    他說：“理性地講，如果你了解了真實情況，那就應該有所考慮，可他們仍然聽信流言。”

    研究人員一直用類似的游戲來研究人們如何合作及流言對于團隊的影響。索姆費爾德說，科學家將流言定義為人們散布的有關不在場的人的社會信息。

    該研究還指出，從進化論角度來說，流言是人們獲取其他人社會評價信息及游刃于工作和日常生活中各種社會關系網的重要工具。