Why are so many people gossipers?

The transmission of gossip is a constant in virtually every type of society. Why is that?

The world of gossip is not simply something that is confined to television gossip; it is deeply embedded in our lives, even when we think we don't participate in it.

In fact, rumors and gossip are phenomena that have been widely studied by social psychology for decades, and many researchers have set out to analyze how they are born, how they spread and what effects they have.

Of course, there are people who are more likely than others to fall into the temptation of always looking for pieces of personal information and spreading it; we do not all act the same. But... what is it that makes so many gossipy people exist??

A basic socialization mechanism

There are researchers who attribute great importance to gossip, as it is at the base of our first forms of socialization.

For example, psychologist and biologist Robin Dunbar has developed a theory that places gossip that places gossiping at the beginning of the use of language in humans, tens of thousands of years ago. For him, gossiping was the evolution of the ritual that our ancestors followed in grooming and deworming each other's skin. If this activity served to reinforce social ties, with the appearance of language this custom was transformed into an exchange of information in a confidential context, which served to socialize and to learn more about what was going on in the tribe.

In a way, the existence of gossip allowed the use of language to continue to develop, which led to the emergence of complex and extensive societies.

Thus, listening to and transmitting gossip served to learn through simple narratives the social norms of a group, the status of each individual and even the opportunities the social norms of a group, the status of each individual, and even the opportunities: is relating to certain people positive? is there someone who is looking for a partner? etc.

Thus, gossiping people, at heart, are fond of a style of transmitting information that could have its origins in the birth of language, and that is why it is still used today in a context where the tribe has disappeared and the number of people from whom interesting gossip can be extracted is much higher.

Eliminating uncertainty

But gossip also has its raison d'être in social phenomena occurring today, regardless of what happened a long time ago. In fact, the world of gossip is a response to a basic psychological need: To eliminate as much uncertainty as possible.especially if it has to do with something that catches our attention and that we keep in mind relatively often.

Our brain is not designed to know everything, but it is more than competent when it comes to selecting information that is relevant to us and accumulating data on that particular topic.

When we sense that there are answers that escape us, we feel bad, because the information we have is insufficient and, if we consider it important, we will try to complete it in order to reestablish our knowledge, we will try to complete it in order to reestablish the cognitive balance we had before. that we had before. This is what happens, for example, with cognitive dissonance, which appears when we realize that our mental schemas do not fit well with the new information that comes to us.

For example, someone who is a fan of a singer may react strongly to rumors of that person's drug use if he or she feels that such behavior does not fit with the idea of a respectable person. This may cause him or her to try to probe further into the subject in order to modify his or her ideas in the least unpleasant way possible and make this new information fit well into his cognitive schemas (for example, by concluding that there is not enough evidence to consider the rumor true, or by holding someone else in the singer's circle of friends responsible).

Beyond the fan phenomenon

But... What happens when the gossip is about someone we don't even respect or idolize? In these cases, the uncertainty elimination mechanism continues to work, making us interested in the lives of people who, in a way, we would say that they do not interest us at all.

For example, the Heart programs are characterized by their insistence on exposing details of people's lives. details of the lives of people with whom we do not empathize. with whom we do not empathize. The trick here is that the simple repeated exposure to information about a particular person makes that person more important to us, regardless of whether we like him or her or not.

Somehow, the brain gets used to reactivating memories related to that public (or not so public) figure, so that we will think about him or her more often and, consequently, it will be more relevant for us to fill in those knowledge gaps about his or her life when they are revealed.

Thus, even people who are not known for idolizing certain icons of popular culture are prone to gossip, even if sometimes they do not admit it.

Is gossip useful?

The very concept of gossip usually goes hand in hand with the idea that the information is of little practical relevance, and often this is true precisely because we know of the existence of people we only know through the media.This is often true precisely because we know of the existence of people we only know about through the media. On other occasions, however, gossip may be useful from the point of view of individual interest, although the kind of opportunities offered by the fact of knowing this information are frowned upon and, therefore, contribute to the fact that gossip in general does not enjoy a good reputation either.

In short, determining whether gossip is useful or not depends on each case and on the type of ethical scale from which one starts.

In conclusion

Gossip is a component of socialization that was probably born in small communities and that, over the millennia, has been adapted to societies of different sizes, have been adapted to massified societies..

If there are so many people with a propensity to listen to rumors, it is precisely because they exist through a basic psychological principle: to capture information about subjects that we tend to think about, either because we find it reasonable to consider them for our own benefit or because marketing and propaganda campaigns have led us to think about them.either because we find it reasonable to take them into account in order to obtain benefits or because marketing and propaganda campaigns have led us to think a lot about certain people even if this does not bring us a clear material benefit.