Psst… Have You Heard The Gossip?
Psst… Have You Heard The Gossip? Gossip. You hear it all the time. Or maybe you don’t- all those little tidbits floating around in the air like the stench of stale cheese from hallway to auditorium to friends to colleagues all the way right outside your front door. And you might not even know about it. Did I just make you paranoid? Well, don’t worry, because the topic for this article is one that you may not have foreseen- the brilliant benefits of gossip unbeknownst to much of mankind. Yes, you heard me right. Researchers in the Plotkin Research Group in Mathematical Biology in the University of Pennsylvania School of Arts & Sciences recently assembled a mechanistic math model showcasing the relationship between gossip and cooperation. The authors- Mari Kawakatsu, Joshua B. Plotkin, and Taylor A. Kessinger- state that gossip can actually help facilitate discussions that hold people accountable for their actions. After all, sources like social media, news, and journals onl