What is the best way to gossip?
Despite its negative connotation, gossip has many advantages. Indeed, it is vital to cooperate in large groups. Yet gossipers are often looked down upon. Why is that? And what is the best way to gossip? That is what UvA behavioural scientist Terence Dores Cruz is researching.
Terence, tell me, what exactly is gossiping?
“Simply put, it is any information you share about someone who is not present. If you consider how often you yourself do that in a day, you realise that a large part of human communication consists of gossiping.”
Why do we actually gossip?
“To get more information about the people in our social network. In fact, through gossiping you find out more about people – even if you don’t have direct contact with them. That way, people know who to hang out with. In fact, it has been crucial in our evolutionary history. According to evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, by gossiping, people managed to maintain relationships in larger groups of 50 to 100 people.”
“Gossiping is also an indirect way of encouraging or punishing certain behaviour. Suppose a friend throws rubbish in the street. Then it might not feel safe to respond to that directly. It’s easier to tell another friend that you didn’t think that was cool. Indirectly, it then gets back to that person.”
How much influence does gossip have?
“Our research shows that gossip does get taken seriously. It also has an effect on how we think about each other. Even one gossip about a friend or acquaintance affects how you think about that person.”
Gossip often has a negative connotation. Is that justified?
“I don’t think so anymore. During my master’s I found out that gossiping also has many advantages. If I look at how people use social information to cooperate – my area of interest in scientific research – gossiping plays a very important role in that.”
“However, it is important to distinguish between motivations for gossiping. It can be social: you want to help the group or an individual, or for competitive reasons: you want to put someone in a bad light to win a promotion. In my dissertation, I examined both motivations and the social ones were dominant. But I don’t know if I can extrapolate that to the rest of the world.”
So why is it that we often have a negative opinion of gossips?
“That is indeed interesting, and it also appears to depend on the behaviour of the gossiper. We are now also doing research into that: which gossiping behaviour is appreciated and which is not?”
“If someone spreads negative gossip, the recipient often thinks it is for competitive reasons, and the judgement of the gossiper is worse. Whereas if you suspect that the gossiper has social motives, the judgement is more positive. If we find out that a gossip is a lie, we think this is bad. But even worse, we find it bad if someone does not gossip, when that person has important information.”
“In short, we do think gossiping is important. But the crazy thing is that gossipers are not appreciated. At best, they are rewarded by not being punished. Why that is, we will investigate further.”
Do you have any tips for gossipers?
“The best way to gossip is to say nice things about others when they are not around. That’s a win-win situation, which means you can even count on a little appreciation from the recipient, our research shows. As long as you tell the truth.”
“Watch out for sharing negative gossip. That too is important to share with others in order to work well together, but research shows that it can also put the gossiper in a negative light. So if you only tell negative gossip, that apparently reflects on you.”
“How exactly that comes about, we still have to investigate. Our theory is that the recipient assumes that the negative gossiper is more likely to be involved in negative interactions himself. Also, people almost always link sharing negative news to having negative motives. Whereas that doesn’t always have to be the case.”
“And so that’s why I also have a tip for recipients: when someone gossips against you, ask yourself, why is someone sharing this? People who naturally think more deeply about social information are more likely to correctly assess the gossiper’s motives. And that way, you can also turn negative gossip into something positive.”
