A news item this week in the Daily Telegraph reported on some research carried out by a team at Queen’s University in Belfast. Apparently people are more generous if they are told that their actions will be the subject of gossip. Knowing that they will be talked about seems to encourage people to take advantage of the opportunity to enhance their reputations. According to the study,
“The current research provides clear experimental evidence showing that concerns about being identified and gossiped about play an important role in prosocial behaviour.”
The DT added that gossip has previously been shown to help people in relationship building and “should be seen as a positive social skill.” It is only a problem when people are bad at it!
Gossip is named 10 times in the NIV translation of the Bible. It is appealing but it has the ability to separate close friends and stoke the fires of conflict. The ability of gossip to make people more generous is simply an appeal to people’s pride. Most of us want to be well thought of and if we think that being generous will achieve this, we will be generous. But in terms of motivation there is little difference between this kind of generosity and someone who is “generous” because they have been blackmailed or because someone threatened to pull their fingernails off.
This kind of generosity hardly deserves the name.
By appealing to pride or fear, we can motivate people to all kinds of things. Christianity appeals to a motivation of love. Christian generosity springs from a love for God and a love for other people. And Christian love will also determine how we talk about, and to, other people.
