背景介绍：
八卦在职场及日常生活中普遍存在，据研究显示，人们每天花费大量时间谈论他人。八卦不仅是轻松话题，也被视为一种非正式的信息交流方式，对职场规范、个人名誉及团队氛围产生深远影响。然而，不实信息的传播及在特定情境下的激增也令人担忧。有效管理对于控制职场八卦泛滥至关重要。
Gossip is everywhere. On one estimate, from Megan Robbins and Alexander Karan of University of California, Riverside, people spend 52 minutes a day on average talking about other people. Gossip pervades the workplace. You hear it in conversations among colleagues; you know who to go to for the latest round of it.
八卦无处不在。据加州大学河滨分校的梅根·罗宾斯和亚历山大·卡兰估计，人们每天平均花52分钟谈论其他人。职场里到处都是八卦。你总是能在同事的谈话里听到，也知道该找谁去打听最新的八卦。
You can tell when gossip is imminent: voices suddenly lower and there may well be some theatrical looking around to check that the target is not in earshot. Sometimes it is offered up explicitly, like a vol-au-vent at a drinks party: “Do you want to hear a bit of gossip?” And yes, you almost certainly do.
开始八卦之前往往有迹可循：突然压低嗓门，可能还会夸张地左顾右盼，确认目标人物不在附近。有时候它会来得毫不掩饰，就像鸡尾酒会上的小点心：“想听点八卦吗？”而你基本上肯定会想听。
Managers have grapevines, too. Scholars of gossip (what happens when these people all get together at a conference is a subject for future research) tend to describe it as informal exchanges of evaluative information about people who aren’t there.
管理者也有自己的小道消息渠道。研究八卦的学者（这些人聚在一起开会该是何等光景，这是个有待未来去研究的课题）往往称之为对不在场者的评价信息的非正式交流。
Those exchanges can be complimentary as well as critical. By that definition, bosses who do not gossip about employees may not be doing their job properly.
或褒或贬的信息都可以交流。按这个定义，不谈论员工八卦的老板或许并不称职。
Its ubiquity suggests that gossip must have some benefits. It is definitely a lot more entertaining to talk about colleagues, particularly if they are seen furtively entering a hotel room together, than the latest set of quarterly numbers. Evolutionary psychologists also reckon that gossip is helpful in instilling social norms.
八卦既然如此普遍，那它肯定有一些好处。谈论同事显然比谈论最新的季度业绩要有趣得多，特别是有人看到他俩偷偷摸摸地一起进入酒店房间的话。进化心理学家还认为，八卦有助于灌输社会规范。
In their book “The Social Brain”, Tracey Camilleri, Samantha Rockey and Robin Dunbar point to the example of hunter-gatherer groups in southern Africa who use gossip to convey criticism of those who fail to share the spoils of successful hunts.
在《社会大脑》一书中，特蕾西·卡米莱里、萨曼莎·罗基和罗宾·邓巴以南非的狩猎采集者部落为例，指出他们通过八卦来批评那些不愿与他人分享猎物的人。
Similar behaviour is visible in the workplace. In a recent paper by Terence Dores Cruz of the University of Amsterdam and his co-authors, participants were asked whether they would share gossip about someone who was constantly slacking off and leaving others to do the work.
在职场中也能看到类似的行为。阿姆斯特丹大学的泰伦斯·多雷斯·克鲁兹等人最近发表的一项研究询问受试者是否愿意分享关于某人经常偷懒、把活儿都甩给别人的八卦。
People were more likely to pass that piece of information on to a person who was going to have to work with this good-for-nothing than to one who was not. The knowledge that reputations are partly forged through gossip can act as a deterrent to bad behaviour.
人们更愿意把这个消息传递给将要与这个懒人共事的人，而不是无关的其他人。知道了名声在某种程度上是由八卦造就的，人们就会对做出不良行为有所忌惮。
But that reputational effect is also one reason to worry about gossip. For sometimes incentives emerge to spread inaccurate information about other people.
但这种对名誉的影响也是让人担忧八卦的一个原因。有时，人们会出于某种动机散播关于他人的不实信息。
Another experiment, conducted by Kim Peters and Miguel Fonseca of the University of Exeter, found, among other things, that lies cropped up twice as frequently when gossipers were told they were in competition with each other.
埃克塞特大学的金姆·彼得斯和米格尔·丰塞卡所做的另一项实验发现，当一群八卦者被告知他们彼此存在竞争时，谎言的出现增加了一倍。
If there is uncertainty around a big event like lay-offs or the appointment of a new boss, gossip will flourish. If people think they are being treated unfairly, then they will want to vent about it to co-workers. If workers have jobs that bore them rigid, they will alleviate the tedium with chit-chat. One cure for excess gossip is decent management.
如果有裁员或任命新老板等重大事件引发不确定性，八卦就会疯狂生长。如果人们觉得自己受到不公平对待，就会向同事诉苦。如果工作让员工厌烦至极，他们就会用闲聊解闷。要想避免八卦泛滥，像样的管理是一剂良方。
重难点词汇：
innuendo [ˌɪnjəˈwɛndoʊ] n. 暗指；暗示；影射
pervade [pərˈveɪd] v. 弥漫；渗透；遍及
complimentary [ˌkɑːmplɪˈmentri] adj. 赞美的；恭维的；赞扬的
furtively [ˈfətɪvlɪ] adv. 偷偷地；暗中地
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