Gossip: Tittle-Tattle or Social Information?

Negative or positive?

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Gossip: Tittle-Tattle or Social Information?

Talking with a friend about someone else’s life can be enjoyable. It makes you feel closer in a conspiratorial sort of way. It’s said to be a type of social cohesion. I remember sitting on a settle in the corner of my grandmother’s living room as a child, listening to several of my aunts (my mother was one of ten daughters) discussing people in the village.

They loved to talk about the goings-on of the villagers, the love lives, the deaths, the marriages, and recently discovered affairs. While sitting quietly in the corner near the old cooking range, with my books and crayons, sometimes with one or more of my many cousins, I would be preoccupied but absorbing the chat.

My grandparents lived in the country in a tied cottage, owned by my grandfather’s employer, the farmer for whom he worked. They all used language peculiar to the countryside, and I picked up many of the sayings. When the aunts were discussing people, they sometimes used odd phrases that stayed in my mind. One day, they talked about a woman I knew to be pretty and always well-dressed.

“She hasn’t half got a bob on herself,” one of my aunts declared dismissively. This amused me. Even at my age, it was obvious what this phrase meant. They were making judgments in their gossip about the villagers and enjoyed their camaraderie in doing so. My aunts could be cruel but never vicious in their discussions about the locals. It would be upsetting for the target of their gossip if she knew what the aunts thought about her.

Science tells us that being judgmental is natural, instinct-based, and necessary for our safety. Knowing whether people are trustworthy stems from a basic instinct that requires us to judge them, so some amount of judgment is important. However, our brains have a natural bias to focus on the negative.

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge ~ Carl Jung

Gossiping is as old as language. It’s about stories, other people’s stories and aren’t we all interested in those? Certainly, for writers, gossip that reveals hidden details of a love affair, for instance, could be fodder for fiction. It’s only through gossip, too, that we learn how rounded people are. We can see behind the facade they present to the world and understand them more deeply. This is a reason we find it so fascinating. People never cease to surprise us.

There is a difference, though, between harmless gossip and bitchy tittle-tattle and it’s important to remember that, for our peace of mind. As Confucius said, to engage in gossip and spreading of rumours is to abandon virtue. Comparing ourselves to others we might consider better looking, wealthier or more advantaged results in our being envious, so we judge them harshly. Was this what was happening with my aunt, who criticized the villager for being proud of her appearance? Was she envious?

I was in an awkward situation recently in a conversation with a friend when I almost let slip something I had learned via a mutual friend about someone very close to her. I had to backtrack hastily, and avoid lying, which would have exacerbated the faux pas. Sometimes, it’s better not to know things passed on in gossip.

Another time, a friend told me that her married pal was having an affair with someone else’s husband in their friends’ circle and it was very awkward when all the couples were out together. She wondered whether she should tell the wife who was also a friend, for whom she felt a sort of guilt knowing she was being cheated on, or let the affair run its course. I wondered how people could live such complicated lives while keeping so much secret.

Photo by Jonny Clow on Unsplash

People have always thought of gossiping as a negative. It was during the 16th-century witch hunts that the negative connotation was first made. It was about that time too that the fallacy that only women gossip first emerged.

A 1993 observational study found that male participants spent 55% of conversation time and female participants spent 67% of conversation time on the discussion of socially relevant topics, so it was benign chatter. In another study on gossip, researchers found that only 15% of the conversations involved negativity.

In April 2021, a study by Dartmouth College found that gossip isn’t all simply passing on rumours or saying nasty things about other people, but that there were three benefits which were all positive.

The first is that gossiping helps to create social bonds and strengthen friendships. The second is if you have a problem, sharing it with a friend or colleague can help resolve it. People may perceive this as gossip, but it actually has beneficial effects rather than destructive ones. Third, being stressed and anxious about something, discussing it via gossip with a friend, neighbour or colleague can help ease the pressure.

Scholars have argued that gossip helped our ancestors to survive. This theory was first mooted by an evolutionary psychologist, Robin Dunbar. Instead of bonding by grooming each other, picking off dirt and fleas like our ancient forebears, we gossip about other people and convey social information.

The urge to share a piece of gossip we’ve just heard is a natural part of being human. However, we must consider the feelings of those involved and not pass on hurtful information. In my friend’s case with the cheating pal, telling the wife about her husband’s affair would have alleviated her guilt at knowing, but at what cost? The affair fizzled out eventually.

Comments:

Have you ever knowingly been the target of gossip?

Was my friend right not to tell the wife about her unfaithful husband?

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