The social function of gossip

The gossip is usually considered as something negative, however, a study has concluded otherwise. According to the report, allows social connection, as well as the possibility of learning about the environment, indirectly, through other people's experiences.

Gossip teaches us and unites us

The gossip does not necessarily have to be based on the dissemination of rumors in repeating harmful things about other people. The gossip can be present from an intimate private online talk, as well as through other platforms.

According to some investigations, such as Megan Robbins and Alexander Karan, 14 % of people's daily conversations consist of gossip, but a neutral tone.

The researcher Eshin Jolly, attached to the Computational Social Affective Neuroscience Laboratory (Cosan), and co -author of a study with the assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences, Luke Chang, the gossip "It can be a means of social and substantive connection beyond its typical negative connotation".

These authors, Jolly and Chang felt the curiosity of knowing why people, both in their private and professional life dedicated time to exchange information about themselves and other people, so they decided to analyze what function the gossip has and why the people do it.

To make their inquiries, they created an online game that allowed them. For the experiment, groups of six people were completed and the participants played 10 rounds. In each of the rounds, the participants received $ 10, being able to choose to keep the money and invest it in a background that would multiply by 1.5 and divided into equal parts among the players.

The game in question created a tension that was listed selfishness or cooperative behavior. Under certain conditions, the information was restricted so that players could not observe the behavior of the other players.

In this regard, the researchers said: “Our inspiration was to create a realistic scenario in which participants were members of a community and were affected by the actions of all others, most of whom could rarely observe or interact with others directly".

At certain times, players were allowed to maintain private talks with other participants, which made it possible for information on the behavior of other players. Then, the players reported their will or lack of will to play again with said player.

The findings of this experiment were published in the magazine Current Biology where The researchers showed that gossip had a social function. The types of gossip were different, always depending on the amount of information they had.

As for the spontaneous conversations about other players, they emerged frequently during the games, when the participants could only observe the behavior of a part of the members of their group. But when all players could be observed directly, then they discussed and talked about another much broader range of topics.

All this experiment allowed to illustrate how gossip allows people to learn about the experiences of others, especially when direct observation is not feasible.

With this study it could be demonstrated that the participants who talked to each other, felt a greater connection with each other at the end of the game.

Given this, Chang states that: “By exchanging information with others, Gossip is a way to start relationships… It implies trust and facilitates a social bond that is reinforced as greater communication occurs ”.

All this allowed researchers to speak about the importance of gossip and not consider it as a simple "garbage talk without foundation", since gossip implies "a shared reality" in which friends and colleagues tend common links, create alliances, exchange personal information and run about the behavior of others to establish a consensus of socially acceptable behaviors.

Social intelligence, what is it

Bibliography

• Jolly, e., & Chang, L. J. (2021). Gossip Drives Vicarious Learning and facilitates Social Connection. Current Biology.
• Robbins, m. L., & Karan, to. (2020). WHO GOSSIPS AND How INTE LIFE?. Social Psychological and Personality Science, eleven(2), 185-195.