GUWAHATI: Gossip may not always be a bad thing and it actually offers several unexpected benefits, a new study by researchers from Stanford and the University of Maryland has found.
The study titled, “Explaining the evolution of gossip” which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that gossipers aren’t all that bad and that gossiping can actually provide a “social benefit”.
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Gossip is good at disseminating information about people’s reputations, which can help recipients of these tips connect with cooperative people while avoiding selfish ones and that “gossipers proliferate as well as sustain the reputation system and cooperation”, the study revealed.
A computer simulation was used by researchers to help solve the long-standing social psychology mystery of how gossiping evolved into such a popular pastime which transcends gender, age, culture and socioeconomic background.
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“One previous study shows that, on average, a person spends an hour per day talking about others, so this takes a lot of time out of our daily life,” the study’s first author Xinyue Pan stated.
Though gossip has a negative connotation, Pan said that the information gossipers share can be complimentary and regardless of its content, gossip can have a useful function.
“Positive and negative gossip are both important because gossip plays an important role in sharing information about people’s reputations. Once people have this information, cooperative people can find other good people to cooperate with, and this is actually beneficial for the group. So gossiping is not always a bad thing. It can be a positive thing,” Pan further said.
