Introduction and Contribution:

Gossip — sharing information, both positive and negative, about absent third parties — plays a major role in social life. Two friends spread a rumor about their neighbor’s infidelity, an employee’s hard work is praised at a manager's meeting, and so on. 

From an evolutionary standpoint, however, the origins and proliferation of gossip are somewhat puzzling. Not only is it costly — acquiring personal information, sharing it with others, perhaps risking ostracism for being a yenta — but the evolutionary benefits are not clear. Indeed, gossiping may be entertaining, but it seems like a stretch to think it could improve human adaptation, let alone survival.

In “Explaining the evolution of gossip,” Xinyue Pan, Vincent Hsiao, Dana S. Naub, and Michele J. Gelfand conduct a series of computer simulations to model the gossiping process and shed light on the benefits it generates for both society and gossipers. The authors posit two such benefits that help explain its evolution: First, gossip spreads information about others’ reputations, helping people identify those who will (not) cooperate with them. Second, gossip reduces selfishness, as those who otherwise would not cooperate will choose to do so with gossipers in order to manage their reputations. These are called the “reputation dissemination” and “selfishness deterrence” functions, respectively.

Readers come away with a sense of the power of agent-based modeling to solidify our intuitions about complex social processes. Indeed, gossip involves dynamics of communication, cooperation, geographical proximity, as well as both personal and collective gain. Models help simplify these dynamics. In addition, the authors illustrate how an ostensibly non-strategic activity has very important strategic dynamics and implications. 

The Simulation Setup:

Agents in the simulation develop a strategy based on two decisions: whether or not to gossip and how exactly to cooperate with other agents. The former is a binary choice, whereas the latter permits six choices. Of these six, three are especially important: The “exploitive” agent is one who only chooses to cooperate if they believe their partner cannot easily be taken advantage of in the game. In other words, exploiters condition their choice on the other agent’s reputation. Next, the “virtuous” agent cooperates if it believes the other agent will and otherwise defects. Finally, the “opportunist” agent will only cooperate with gossipers and never with non-gossipers.
 

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Figure 2b. Plot (B) illustrates an agent’s action as a function of their own strategy and their belief about the interaction partner’s strategy.

The other three cooperation strategies are as follows: “unconditional defectors” and “unconditional cooperators” are, as the names imply, insensitive to information about others’ reputations. Meanwhile, “reverse opportunists” only cooperate with non-gossipers and never with gossipers. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the authors will show that agents tend to discard these three strategies over time. If gossip is, in fact, beneficial from an evolutionary standpoint, then both cooperative and gossiping strategies must increase over time.

To model the gossiping process requires that agents respond to new information and update their strategies accordingly. This will help them maximize their success and avoid being exploited by others. Information can thus be obtained in two ways: either agents observe each other’s behavior during the game and use it to infer their strategy, or information is disseminated to them via gossip.

The simulation proceeds in three steps. First, agents play a “cooperation game,” whereby each player simultaneously decides whether to cooperate or defect. (The rules are as follows for two agents, A and B: A incurs a cost of 1 for cooperating while B’s benefit is 3, and vice versa. A thus gains by cooperating, but is tempted to defect to gain 3 while B pays a cost of 1, and vice-versa.) The second step involves the dissemination of gossip. Finally, strategies are updated based on the first and second steps. 

Simulation Results:

The authors show that over time, the vast majority of agents (90%) choose to gossip and to cooperate (78%). The three most common cooperation strategies are “exploitive” (57%), “opportunistic” (18%), and “virtuous.” By contrast, none of the other three cooperation strategies is chosen more than 5% of the time.
 

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Figure 3. The evolutionary trajectories of different strategies and behaviors. The lines are average trajectories from 30 simulation runs with all the six cooperation strategies under the default parameter choice. The shadows show the SEs of the average trajectories. Plot (A) illustrates the evolution of gossipers. Plot (B) illustrates the evolution of different cooperation strategies. Plot (C) illustrates the evolution of cooperation. 

At first glance, the high prevalence of cooperation and exploitive/opportunistic strategies may appear puzzling. However, the growth of gossip helps guard against exploitation and opportunism. In other words, it remains strategically rational to exploit when feasible, but doing so simply becomes less feasible over time. 

One surprising finding is that gossipers and opportunists actually need each other. Opportunists cooperate with gossipers to protect their reputations, and in doing so give gossipers a real survival advantage over non-gossipers. As co-author Michele J. Gelfand said in a recent interview, “Opportunistic agents kind of get a bad rap. They’re seen as kind of sneaky…But in fact, they’re actually helping a lot in the population.”

The final aspect of the simulation involves showing that both functions of gossip, (1) disseminating reputations and (2) deterring selfishness, are jointly necessary to explain its evolution. To do this, the authors begin by analyzing solely function (1). Yet, this provides no direct benefit to gossipers: they spend time and energy disseminating information that helps others, but without deterring opportunists, who are not necessarily more likely to cooperate with them. In this situation, gossiping strategies will not proliferate. This is why function (2) must be part of the explanation. Gossipers directly benefit when opportunistic agents must manage their reputations by cooperating with them. In this way, they can deter the prospect of defection, which non-gossipers still face.
 

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Figure 4. Results of Steps 1 and 2. Each condition is the average of 30 simulation runs. The value is calculated as the average value from the 4,000th to the 5,000th iterations of each simulation run. The error bars show the SEs. On the Left side of each plot are the results from Step 1; on the Right are the results from Step 2. Plot (A) shows that gossipers evolve only when both reputation dissemination and selfishness deterrence functions exist (i.e., with-gossip and with-rep-manage). Plots (B and C) show that the existence of gossipers (yellow) increases reputation accessibility and cooperation. Plot (D) shows that opportunists evolve only when both reputation dissemination and selfishness deterrence functions exist. Plots (E and F) show that the existence of gossipers increases the proportion of reputation-sensitive agents.

In all, “Explaining the evolution of gossip” is an insightful exercise in “abductive reasoning.” No historical account could ever hope to conclusively show how gossip actually developed. Instead, the simulation shows readers how gossip could possibly have developed in order to provide us with better information and encourage cooperation.

*Brief prepared by Adam Fefer.

The Journal of Korean Studies (JKS), the flagship peer-reviewed publication in the field of Korean studies, returns to Stanford University’s Korea Program at the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) with the publication of Volume 31, Issue 1. JKS publishes a broad range of original scholarly articles related to Korean history, culture, politics, and society. The journal also publishes reviews of new Korea-related books, making it both a venue for original research and a guide to the field’s expanding literature. Its contributors and readership span disciplines and continents, bringing together historians, literary and cultural scholars, sociologists, political scientists, and anthropologists representing the wide range of disciplinary approaches in Korean studies.

The journal’s institutional history traces the arc of Korean studies in the United States. The journal was originally established in 1969 at the University of Washington in Seattle, the early center of gravity for Korean studies in America. After the publication of two standalone volumes (1969, 1971), James Palais, an influential historian of premodern Korea, shaped the journal's intellectual character through serial publication (1979-1987). Michael Robinson, at Indiana University-Bloomington, carried the journal forward as editor (1988-1992) before a long publication hiatus. In 2004, JKS was revived at Stanford University by co-editors Gi-Wook Shin, the William J. Perry Professor of Contemporary Korea and director of the Korea Program at APARC, and John Duncan, professor of Korean history at UCLA and former director of its Center for Korean Studies. It was housed at Stanford until 2008. The journal has since been guided by editorial leadership at the University of Washington (Clark Sorensen), Columbia University (Theodore Hughes), and The George Washington University (Jisoo Kim). JKS returns to Stanford under the new editorial team of Paul Chang (Shorenstein APARC), Yumi Moon (Department of History), and Dafna Zur (Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures).

JKS welcomes manuscripts from researchers at all career stages, working across the full range of topics, periods, and methodologies reflected in the field of Korean studies. Korean studies is undergoing genuine growth with new generations of scholars producing compelling work that is reshaping our understanding of Korea’s past and present. The Journal of Korean Studies exists to support and disseminate that work.

Kerstin Norris is a research associate at APARC’s Korea Program and managerial editor of The Journal of Korean Studies.

This story first appeared in Japanese in Asahi Shimbun's GLOBE+. The English translation below was machine-generated and lightly edited for accuracy. You can also read a related news article about the Stanford Japan Barometer's experiment discussed here via our website.

The Japanese are currently very cautious about accepting foreign workers, a trend that has intensified especially in recent years. Among foreigners, those from China tend to be less favored, while those more readily accepted are immigrants from Europe, the United States, or Vietnam who work in fields such as medicine, research, or science, speak Japanese, and have high academic qualifications. The Stanford Japan Barometer is an online public opinion survey conducted by Kiyoteru Tsutsui, professor of sociology at Stanford University and director of the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, and political scientist Charles Crabtree of Monash University in Australia, covering a variety of themes including Japanese society, economy, and politics. While it boasts one of the largest respondent numbers in Japan, this time the survey focused on the themes of "immigrants" and "foreigners."

The survey was conducted from February 6-8 and 13-16, 2026, with the aim of examining changes in public opinion before and after the House of Representatives election held on February 8, 2026. The number of respondents was slightly over 4,000 in each period. However, the results were almost identical before and after the election.

The survey explored the extent to which Japanese people support or oppose the acceptance of foreign workers. Respondents were asked to answer "agree," "somewhat agree," "somewhat disagree," or "disagree" for 16 policies, including "climate change/global warming," "declining birthrate," "aging population," "social security for the working generation," "national budget cuts," "economic inequality," and "AI strategy."

In the first survey, when asked about "accepting foreign workers," 46.9% answered "agree" (first two groups), and 53.1% answered "disagree" (last two groups), indicating that opposition was the highest percentage. The second survey yielded similar results, with 46.6% agreeing and 53.4% ​​disagreeing.

Regarding policy priorities, including "acceptance of foreign workers," surveys were also conducted in 2022 and 2023. These surveys covered 14 policy items, and while the response categories differed slightly, the content is comparable. In 2022 and 2023, broadly speaking, opposition accounted for 35.5% and 36.6% respectively. This represents an increase of approximately 18 percentage points between 2022 and 2026. This is a significant change compared to other items, where the opposition rate either decreased or remained unchanged, or increased by only a few percentage points. In the following text, the researchers explain the experiment further.

Popular among Westerners and Indians

We also investigated what kind of immigrants are preferred. To do this, we asked people to "make judgments from the perspective of an immigration officer." We asked them about nine attributes: gender, educational background, country of origin, Japanese language ability, reason for immigration application, occupation, length of previous work experience, work plan, and travel history to Japan.

The research method involves randomly combining these nine attributes to create two "candidate profiles," and then asking respondents to choose one of them in a two-option format. The same question is repeated a total of six times with variations in the options, and the responses obtained from all respondents are compiled and analyzed. This method allows for a statistically closer understanding of the respondents' true feelings.

The educational background ranges from "no formal schooling" to "equivalent to a Japanese graduate degree" (7 categories), and the applicants come from eight countries: the United States, India, Turkey, Germany, Brazil, Vietnam, China, and South Korea. Japanese language proficiency is categorized into four levels, from "spoke through an interpreter during the interview" to "spoke fluently in Japanese during the interview." The reasons for applying are categorized into three types: "to live with family already in Japan," "to escape political/religious persecution," and "to seek better employment in Japan." The occupations are categorized into 11 types, including IT engineers, convenience store clerks, caregivers, childcare workers, doctors, research scientists, and financial consultants. Work experience is categorized into four types, from "no experience" to "more than 5 years." Employment plans are categorized into four types: "no plans to look for work at this time," "plans to look for work after arriving in Japan," "no contract with an employer in Japan, but has had job interviews," and "has a contract with an employer in Japan." There are five types of travel history to Japan: "Entered Japan once without legal permission," "Spent six months with family in Japan," "Never visited Japan," "Entered Japan once on a tourist visa," and "Visited Japan multiple times on a tourist visa."

The analysis revealed that the most popular responses for each of the above categories were: "female," "graduate degree," "German," "spoke fluent Japanese during the interview," "to live with family already in Japan," "doctor," "more than 5 years of work experience," "has a contract with an employer in Japan," and "spent 6 months with family in Japan." The countries of origin where they were most likely to be accepted were Germany, followed by the United States, then India, Vietnam, Turkey, Brazil, South Korea, and China.

Furthermore, we investigated whether the ease of accepting immigrants changes depending on the preconditions. Focusing on three areas—the Japanese economy, the culture of Japanese society, and the governance and public safety of Japan—we asked participants to choose from "agree," "somewhat agree," "somewhat disagree," or "disagree" regarding Japan expanding immigration after reading statements such as "increased immigration will benefit the Japanese economy" or "will be a burden," "will enrich the culture of Japanese society" or "will be detrimental," and "will bring stability to the governance and public safety of Japan" or "will cause chaos." The results showed that the most significant increase in support for immigration was when the precondition of economic benefits was read. Conversely, the most significant increase in opposition was when the statement that increased immigration would cause chaos to governance and public safety was read.

"The impact of political public opinion arousal"

Regarding these results, Professor Tsutsui commented, "The acceptance of foreign workers has become a major concern for Japanese people. Previously, it was probably not such a significant issue for the average Japanese person, but interest in accepting foreign workers has rapidly increased following the 2025 House of Councillors election and the subsequent gubernatorial elections. This can be attributed to the influence of political public opinion-raising efforts by parties such as the Sanseito party. Although the proportion of foreigners in Japan is on the rise, it is still low compared to Western countries, and it was surprising to see such a shift in public opinion through a political campaign, even in a country that hasn't received a large influx of immigrants."

Regarding the unfavorable perception of people of Chinese descent, the author states, "The tendency to dislike minority groups that become competitors and threaten one's position is quite widespread. For example, in the United States, after the Civil Rights Movement, when Black people began to enter white residential areas and schools, white people felt their space was threatened and that Black people were becoming competitors, leading to resistance. For Japanese people, even among Asian foreigners, Vietnamese people are seen as people who fill jobs in areas with labor shortages, such as elderly care, and are viewed more as complementary than competitive. This is in stark contrast to the perception of Chinese people."

Furthermore, the survey indicated that foreigners who are easily accepted by Japanese people are "individuals with high levels of education, work experience, and Japanese language proficiency, who possess the ability to contribute to Japanese society and who are prepared to do so. A similar trend has been observed in the United States, where ability is highly valued."

Learn more about the Stanford Japan Barometer's research and insights >