Almost everyone gossips. And a new study finds that people spend about 52 minutes per day, on average, talking to someone about someone else who is not present.
But here's the surprise: Despite the assumption that most gossip is trash talk, the study finds that the vast majority of gossip is nonjudgmental chitchat.
"People love to talk about other people," says Jeremy Cone, a psychologist at Williams College. "Think about your own conversations with a family member or friend: You talk about everyday things that keep you connected. You share that your daughter got her driver's license or your uncle has a kidney stone. Much of it is just documenting facts."
And, of course, the study also finds that some gossip is negative or mean-spirited. About 15% of the snippets of gossip that the researchers analyzed included some types of negative judgements.
But even negative gossip can serve a purpose, as more research has found.
"I think gossiping can be a smart thing to do," says Elena Martinescu, a researcher at King's College London who has studied gossip in the workplace. "It allows people to keep track of what's going on and form social alliances with other people."
Research has shown that gossip can help build group cohesion and cooperation. "When you gossip, you can keep track of who is contributing to the group and who's being selfish," Martinescu explains. "And by sharing this information, you can exclude those group members who are social loafers."
"We also found that negative gossip makes people likely to repair the aspects of their behavior that they were criticized for," Martinescu says.
So, say, for instance, you were criticized for always arriving at work late. Hearing that gossip about yourself may motivate you to want to be on time.
Of course, this isn't a license to be a loose lips or to repeat baseless claims that can damage someone's reputation unfairly. But confiding (吐露个人隐私) in your friends and colleagues and sharing impressions about another person-even when they're negative-may be helpful.
