The Science of Gossip: Why We Can't Stop Ourselves....

Forums: Evolutionary Psychology, Human Bonding, Function Of Gossip
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The Scientific American published an interesting (well, interesting to me anyway) article on the popularity and ubiquity of gossip recently...and has some ideas on why mind-numbingly boring people like Paris Hilton, who appear to be famous only for being famous, exert such a pull.

Here are some excerpts:

It helped us thrive in ancient times, and in our modern world it makes us feel connected to others"as long as it is done properly.....

....In recent years researchers have turned to the study of gossip"our predilection for talking about people who are not present. Why is news about others so irresistible?

As it turns out, gossip serves a useful social function in bonding group members together. In the distant past, when humans lived in small bands and meeting strangers was a rare occurrence, gossip helped us survive and thrive.
Our modern-day infatuation with celebrities reveals the ancient evolutionary psychology of gossip in sharp relief: anyone whom we see that often and know that well becomes socially important to us......

When you cut away its many layers, our fixation on popular culture reflects an intense interest in the doings of other people; this preoccupation with the lives of others is a by-product of the psychology that evolved in prehistoric times to make our ancestors socially successful. Thus, it appears that we are hardwired to be fascinated by gossip.

Only in the past decade or so have psychologists turned their attention toward the study of gossip, partially because it is difficult to define exactly what gossip is. Most researchers agree that the practice involves talk about people who are not present and that this talk is relaxed, informal and entertaining. Typically the topic of conversation also concerns information that we can make moral judgments about. Gossip appears to be pretty much the same wherever it takes place; gossip among co-workers is not qualitatively different from that among friends outside of work. Although everyone seems to detest a person who is known as a “gossip” and few people would use that label to describe themselves, it is an exceedingly unusual individual who can walk away from a juicy story about one of his or her acquaintances, and all of us have firsthand experience with the difficulty of keeping spectacular news about someone else a secret......

.....In his book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Harvard University Press, 1996), psychologist Robin Dunbar of the University of Liverpool in England suggested that gossip is a mechanism for bonding social groups together, analogous to the grooming that is found in primate groups. ....

.....As far as scientists can tell, our prehistoric forebears lived in relatively small groups where they knew everyone else in a face-to-face, long-term kind of way. Strangers were probably an infrequent and temporary phenomenon. Our caveman ancestors had to cooperate with so-called in-group members for success against out-groups, but they also had to recognize that these same in-group members were their main competitors when it came to dividing limited resources. Living under such conditions, our ancestors faced a number of consistent adaptive problems such as remembering who was a reliable exchange partner and who was a cheater, knowing who would be a reproductively valuable mate, and figuring out how to successfully manage friendships, alliances and family relationships.....

........There is ample evidence that when it is controlled, gossip can indeed be a positive force in the life of a group. In a review of the literature published in 2004, Roy F. Baumeister of Florida State University and his colleagues concluded that gossip can be a way of learning the unwritten rules of social groups and cultures by resolving ambiguity about group norms. Gossip is also an efficient way of reminding group members about the importance of the group’s norms and values; it can be a deterrent to deviance and a tool for punishing those who transgress. Rutgers University evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers has discussed the evolutionary importance of detecting “gross cheaters” (those who fail to reciprocate altruistic acts) and “subtle cheaters” (those who reciprocate but give much less than they get). [For more on altruism and related behavior, see “The Samaritan Paradox,” by Ernst Fehr and Suzann-Viola Renninger; Scientific American Mind, Premier Issue 2004.].......

The article is quite long, and can be found in full here:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-gossip

I'd be interested in seeing what people think....it's certainly a damn hard thing to avoid doing, no matter how hard you try, and how bad you feel when you do it!

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@dlowan,

Yes, humans are social animals - like monkeys and other animals. Even in China, one of the oldest civilizations, their language sort of recognized goxxip. The Chinese character for gossip is three women composed into one character.

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@cicerone imposter,

Like men don't gossip!!!!

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@dlowan,

No, but let's face it; most cultures, if not all, always "belittled" women, and "gossip" was viewed as a negative.

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@dlowan,

There is also another aspect of gossip.
I can praise myself indirectly.
None of us as a rule go around and praise how well dressed we are or our good taste or what ever we think we are good at.
But by telling another person - who probably would agree with me - I can tell her how awful Ms. T... is dressed. So the two of us will tear apart poor Ms. T... way of dressing - really meaning how much better test we have.
This also makes us feel connected to others - in a not so nice way.

We we want Ms T.... to belong to the group we would tell a lot of positive gossip again to connect her to our group.

Just look at what is going on during elections.

By the way I know there is a German author who already 1975 wrote a book about gossip.

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@cicerone imposter,

True, dat.

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@saab,

Yes....a lot of it is putting people down type of gossip...but sometimes it's just interested recounting of what adventures people have been up to gossip.

Is it still gossip if it's nice?

It's certainly very bonding in a funny sort of way if it is critical.

It would be fascinating if, after enough time had passed for us all to die, a social psychologist/anthropologist could access all the PMs from a site like this, and analyse the gossip.

By nature, except for letters and those damned gossip magazines, it is an ephemeral beast and, I would have thought, hard to study for that reason.

I am sure it has indeed been studied before,....do you recall what the 1975 book said, Saab?

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@dlowan,

It is some time ago since I read the book so you have to come up with a specific question regarding the chapters. Chapters free translation

Gossip - a beloved form of human communication
cultural/psychological aspects
gossip and rumors
gossip and projections
gossip and the media
gossip and humor
gossip and law
gossip - a way to learn about yourself

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@saab,

Erm....I was more interested if you could recall anything you found interesting, is all.

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@dlowan,

I`ll glance at the book and see if I recall something special

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The Science of Gossip: Why We Can't Stop Ourselves....

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