I heard the other day, on some cable news program, a comparison made between Dennis Kucinich and Napoleon Bonaparte. The analogy, in its simplest form, is fairly obvious: They’re both short. Digging a little deeper, the comparison could also be a nasty criticism about Kucinich’s hunger for power, overcompensation for his shortcomings, or even a tendency toward being French. Although I’m not going to attempt a defense for America’s preeminent Pocket Master, I would like to clear up a much sillier misconception.

Napoleon Bonaparte was not short. In fact, at around 5-feet, 6-inches, he was slightly taller than the average 18th century Frenchman. Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s reconsider that comparison. Because the most important comparison it makes between Rep. Kucinich and the first Emperor of France is untrue, does that make the entire analogy void? Should you now forget about the other implied similarities? It may not matter.

A group of evolutionary biologists at the Max Planck Institute, in concert with other researchers in Germany and Austria, recently published a paper suggesting that people are so influenced by gossip that they will react to it despite direct observation.

The experiment consisted of setting individuals up in a game of indirect reciprocity. This means that subjects would play a game in which they could earn a variable amount of money depending on how much they cooperate with other subjects. In previous experiments like this, it is fairly well established that players will be more generous to those who exhibit fairness and willingness to share, and less generous to those who consistently keep an undue amount of money for themselves.

Of course, this kind of behavior is only possible when the players are able to keep track of others. In order to transfer this information, researchers used two methods. The first was giving players a factual, written record of how their partner has behaved in the past. The second was to provide them with a short description of their partner’s personality in the game, which was composed by another player who had access to the factual information. This second method was considered gossip.

The immediate results were relatively uninteresting. Both methods provided a good correlation between a player’s record and how willing their partner was to share with them. Misers were punished with less money, and the charitable were rewarded with generosity. However, when the two methods were mixed, the situation became much more sordid.

Individuals who were given access to both a factual record of a person’s behavior, as well as gossip, would behave differently than someone who was just given the record. If a subject was given contradictory gossip to the established factual behavior of an individual, they would behave in opposition to the facts. Generous individuals would be punished simply because their partner was exposed to negative gossip, and vice versa.

In terms of evolutionary sociology, this makes a lot of sense. In our prehistoric past, we were rarely treated to direct observation of someone’s behavior. Moreover, it would not be particularly sensible if we were to wait until someone has wronged us before we begin to exclude them from our cooperative ventures. Therefore, it would be highly beneficial to rely on the accounts of other individuals, and forgo being cheated directly. However, this preference toward the acceptance of rumors over demonstrable facts has dire ethical consequences in modern society.

As this study suggests, it is difficult for us to dismiss gossip at the point of hearing it. Even if we consciously choose not to believe it, we are still subject to its unconscious influence over our perceptions and decisions. However, this makes the choice to invent or recommunicate malicious gossip much more reprehensible. Even if a person is able to clear their name by presenting facts, false rumors will continuously tarnish their reputations. So, the next time you want to complain about a vertically challenged acquaintance of yours, leave la petit caporal out of it. He may have been many things, but he was certainly not short.