This story is syndicated from The Tattler, the newspaper of Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Bethesda, MD. The original version of the story ran here.
Being an avid gossiper is something usually frowned upon. Take the show Gossip Girl, for example. The plot follows an anonymous, omniscient blogger who shares text-messaged scandals with the entire school. Their identity remains unknown throughout the show, and they continue to stir the pot each episode. While there isn’t always someone this mischievous at every school, the same type of information that gets around in the blink of an eye is. Cambridge Dictionary defines gossip as “conversation or reports about other people’s private lives that might be unkind, disapproving, or not true” — but don’t be so sure it’s all bad.
According to a meta-analysis published by the NIH, gossip is more normal than not. It can commonly fill up to 65% of conversation time and is found in a wide range of work settings. This is usually regarded as a waste of time, but new research published this February found that gossip can actually be a good thing. According to a joint study between the University of Maryland and the Stanford Business School, just one hour per day of gossiping, on average, can have evident social benefits in helping determine who to trust and who not to trust, creating bonds, and fostering cooperation.
Co-author Dr. Dana Nau, a retired professor in UMD’s Department of Computer Science and Institute for Systems Research, told Maryland Today that we begin to explore each other’s trustworthiness through small anecdotes like gossip.
“When people are interested in knowing if someone is a good person to interact with,” she said, “if they can get information from gossiping — assuming the information is honest — that can be a very useful thing to have.”
The researchers’ extensive work, however, does not encompass the full scope of human complexity and needs further exploration in larger behavioral studies. People are complicated; the human brain is the most complex organ ever created. Dr. Michele Gelfand, a professor at the Stanford Business School and a professor emeritus in UMD’s Department of Psychology cautioned that more research is needed as to why gossiping, which can be time-consuming, is a more effective avenue to information than others. “This has been a real puzzle,” she said. “It’s unclear why gossiping, which requires considerable time and energy, evolved as an adaptive strategy at all.”
Gossip is only helpful if it’s true. It can validate our emotions, and when we share it, we may feel like we have prized information that others will find valuable simply because we are social creatures and are drawn to each other.
The biggest misconception that will likely remain is that gossip is always a negative thing. Thesauruses aren’t likely to remove synonyms for “gossip” like “rumor” and “scandal.”.
There is no denying that there is a difference between discussing something you have personally experienced versus spreading rumors and making things up. It’s easy to get these two confused, but the study’s first author, Xinyue Pan, stressed that the information gossipers share can be complimentary. In the words of Pan, “Positive and negative gossip are both important,” she said, “because gossip plays an important role in people’s reputations.”
