SYSK TRENDING - Why Gossip Is Actually Good for You
Something You Should Know
This episode explores the evolutionary and social benefits of gossip, challenging its negative reputation as merely petty or mean. Host Mike
Key takeaways
- Frank McAndrew defines gossip as talking about an absent person with the intent to make a judgment.
- Gossip serves an evolutionary purpose by helping humans identify allies, avoid threats, and learn unwritten social rules.
Main topics
- Evolutionary psychology of gossip
- Social functions of information sharing
Notable quotes
We're descendants of busybodies.
Conclusion
The episode provides a fascinating reframe of gossip, suggesting that
Transcript preview
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Use code S-Y-S-K at Monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That's 50 % off your first year at Monarch.com with code S-Y-S-K. Speaker 2 (1:22) Gossip. It has a bad reputation. We're told it's petty, mean, and something decent people shouldn't do. But here's the thing. Everybody gossips. And it turns out there may be some very good reasons why. Gossip helps us figure out who we can trust, who we should avoid, and what the unwritten rules are in the groups we belong to. In fact, our fascination with other people's lives may have played an important role in human survival. And that's why today's SYSK Trending topic is why gossip is actually good for you. So why are we drawn to gossip? When is it actually good for us? And when does it cross the line? My guest is psychologist Frank McAndrew, who has spent years studying gossip. And he's going to explain what gossip reveals about us and why life without it might be a lot more difficult than you think. 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Download the Vinted app for free and start listing with no seller fees so you keep everything you earn. Speaker 2 (3:39) As you know, people gossip. It's just kind of what people do. And when you say the word gossip, it does seem to have kind of a negative connotation to it. Gossip is really talking behind someone else's back. It's tacky. It's not the classy thing to do. And yet we all gossip to some extent. And it may in fact be a positive thing that offers real benefits. Frank McAndrew is one of the leading researchers on the topic of gossip, and he is a professor of psychology at Knox College in Illinois. Hey, Frank, welcome to Something You Should Know. Speaker 1 (4:18) Thanks, Mike. Happy to be here. Speaker 2 (4:20) So maybe before we start talking about gossip, we should have like a working definition here. What is it? Speaker 1 (4:26) Well, it is a word that gets misused a lot, and I'm always entertained by people who claim that they never gossip. But people who are in the gossip business usually define it in the following ways. First of all, it's talk about a person, and it has to be an individual that isn't present at the moment. So if I'm talking to you, I can't really gossip to you about yourself. It wouldn't qualify as gossip. Thirdly, it's usually information that we can make some kind of judgment about. We can approve or disapprove of the information that we're talking about. And finally, by definition, it's fun. We can't resist it. Nobody ever says, oh, I've got to go and gossip with my friends now. It's just inherently entertaining. Speaker 2 (5:13) And it does seem that if you get more than one person together, meaning two or more, gossip will ensue. It seems that like it will almost always happen. Speaker 1 (5:26) Well, absolutely. The thing that probably matters the most to most of us in our lives are other people. What are other people doing? What are the implications for me? What are these other people thinking or saying about me? So social talk is really the most entertaining and important talk. And some have argued that it's one of the reasons we have language in the first place, so that we can keep up with each other. Speaker 2 (5:51) Well, when you describe it that way, that we're keeping up. with people. It sounds very benign, but when I think of gossip, there's a nastiness to it. There's a negative connotation to it that isn't just keeping up with other people. It's talking about people behind their back, usually not in a very nice way. Is that fair? Speaker 1 (6:13) Oh, it's very fair. Whenever I talk to people who find out that I'm a gossip researcher and that they hear that I sometimes say gossip isn't all bad, I get these frowns. And the problem is, I think people define gossip in a very narrow way. They only think of it as