Gossip. Sounds bad, doesn’t it? Talking about people when they are not present usually involves either neutral or negative information. But “positive gossip” (saying positive things behind people’s backs), according to one study, increased the efficacy of teams.

    The study participants were college students required to work as a team to research and write a paper. They reported what kind of comments they made about each other, and how much they trusted the rest of the group to contribute to the project. Finally, the researchers evaluated the quality of the submitted work.

    The study showed that groups with “positive gossip” worked harder and produced better results. And while we might think that “negative gossip” would embarrass people and make them work harder, it did not have much of an effect.

    I tried to use various artificial intelligence tools to see if I could find more about this topic. Unfortunately, they hallucinated, giving me some references that did not exist. So I’m spreading some negative gossip about AI tools here. I hope they’re not offended.