Here are some of the things I either heard about recently or that I might have “accidentally” shared with coworkers, friends, or family members:
- “Apparently, Brian faked a sick day to go to a Taylor Swift concert.”
– “He posted a selfie with sparkly face paint. Classic rookie mistake.” - “Aunt Linda brought her new ‘friend’ to the barbecue again.”
– “They’re just ‘friends’ who feed each other ribs?” - “Grandpa secretly got a tattoo on his cruise.”
– “It says ‘YOLO’ in Comic Sans.” - “Did you see what Carla wore to the party?!”
– “She looked like a disco ball having an identity crisis.”
When I first started reading about self-development, one of the first topics I got into was gossip. Gossiping is like inhaling a pack of Oreos: you feel amazing doing it, but terrible after. So I decided to stop. Then every time I had a chance to talk with someone, I found myself talking about someone else. I also noticed that people from all walks of life did it as well. Old people, rich people, politicians, religious people, and so on. Why is this the case, and why is gossip so seductive? Luckily, psychology has the answer.
I stumbled into the answer to my question when I read Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens. According to Harari, gossip isn’t just chatter, but something that played a crucial evolutionary role. Some scientists believe that gossip may have been a primary driver of the development of complex language. Gossip is tied to human nature, and while we tend to think of it as something bad or mean, its evolutionary roots are anything but.
There are three main evolutionary roots of gossip.
- Language emerged to serve social bonding needs. Despite what many think, complex language didn’t evolve to plan hunts or discuss abstract ideas. Early homo sapiens developed language to discuss other people. This is important because it allowed early humans to know who cheated, who was trustworthy, who was sleeping with whom, and who wasn’t contributing to the group. This might have occurred 70,000 to 100,000 years ago, but we’re still concerned about the same issues. This is one of those cases where our environment has changed dramatically, but our psychology hasn’t. We don’t need to know who is sleeping with whom at work, but we still care.
- Gossip is a social survival tool. Most hunter-gatherer groups were rather small (around 150 people). Knowing who could be trusted and who couldn’t was extremely important for survival. Being left out of the group meant death, so nobody wanted to be the outcast. Gossip let our ancestors enforce social norms, spread reputational information, and detect freeloaders.
- Gossip creates social cohesion, which means it builds bonds between people. Talking about a third party (whether that’s the weird guy at the office, the cute girl you keep running into at the park but are too scared to introduce yourself to, or your ex) creates a sense of intimacy with the person you’re having a conversation with. In other words, gossip is a way to create an inner circle where everyone who’s part of the talk gets a sense of belonging.
The fascinating thing about gossip is that it’s so wired into our psychology that even highly educated or powerful people do it. Our psychology doesn’t care about wealth or IQ; it cares about the behaviors for our survival. Gossip also serves strategic purposes in professional or political environments where the person doing it can gather valuable information or assess the competition. Something fascinating as well is the fact that gossip feels good. When we do it, our brains release dopamine. Our psychology rewards us for doing something good for our survival.
Gossip has a bad reputation, but it’s part of what makes us human. We’re messy, curious, social creatures constantly trying to figure out who’s up to what and why it matters to us. It’s how we bond, how we sort allies from threats, and how we avoid being the one eating lunch alone. So next time someone whispers, “Did you hear about Jane?”, don’t feel guilty. Just smile, lean in, and remember: without a little gossip, civilization might never have happened. Just don’t post it on Instagram. You’re not that evolved.
Read more articles