Guess What? Gossip Can Be Good For You!

Even though Husband rolls his eyes and my father wonders why he spent all that money on my college education when I bring home a copy of the National Enquirer, I don’t care. Because it’s fun. Same reason I watch awards shows (Husband doesn’t get that one, either) and why I love following Tragicomical’s posts (Roberta, you kick butt.)

Because gossip is fun. And fun is good, right? One study done last year showed that anything you do that you consider fun stimulates a certain portion of your brain that releases endorphins, which boost your energy levels and feelings of pleasure. Another shows that a round of chatty socializing can boost memory and mental performance…just like you’d taken a quick break from work for a round of Solitaire or to check your Facebook page.

And especially now, we could use a bit of fun in our lives. If you pay attention to current affairs, you see enough cruelty and injustice in one day to provoke a lifetime of bad dreams. At my house, at least, there seems to be competition going on between the unpaid bills and the dishes in the sink, to see which can pile up the highest. Sometimes I wonder if it’s possible to drown in clutter. Or tears.

But then I read about the latest adventures of the rich and famous, and for a little while, I feel better. I’ve boosted my energy. I’ve stimulated my hypothalamus and I’m flooded with feel-good endorphins.

Some people I’ve asked say that gossip is such a big business because we want to revel in the downfalls of the high and mighty - that it makes us feel better about our own lives.

But I don’t want to celebrate other people’s misfortune. Famous or otherwise, we’re all human (or at least, most of us are.) We make mistakes. Damn straight that when a celebrity gets a DUI, it makes more news than if Jane down the street gets one. But at that next block party, you can be sure that some little circles are whispering about her. Some even telling jokes, depending on how many beers they’ve had.

I think that kind of gossip is just mean. And what the paparazzi do sometimes in the name of money turns my stomach.

But I never thought too deeply about our collective hunger for gossip until Michael Jackson died. At some points I’d watch the news and cringe. I didn’t want to know certain details. They were none of my business, and I wanted it left that way. What right did we, who were not members of his family, have to his medical records? His prescriptions? His parenting? But then again…whenever I saw a headline pop up on the web, my reptilian brain wanted to click on it. And I hated that impulse. I wanted to think I was above that.

Why does this happen? What is it in the human organism that craves the latest dirt? Anthropological evidence shows that even when we were living in caves, we were natural storytellers. It’s how we communicate, how we share knowledge from generation to generation. And who knows…maybe among those cave paintings is a bit of gossip about the guy in the next cave who dragged home some woman who wasn’t his wife? In the book, “Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language,” Robin Dunbar (a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Oxford University) wrote that any group of humans capable of language will chat idly about other members of the group. He calls that progress. “Gossip is a tool for social cohesion,” he wrote. He even suggests that gossip – when it’s not mean-spirited - helped us create social networks, which we now know are vitally important to our emotional health and can even be beneficial for our immune systems. One recent study concluded that a round of gossip with a girlfriend makes you feel emotionally closer to that person, releasing progesterone, which in turn reduces anxiety and stress and boosts well-being.

In fact our very survival, according to Eric K. Foster, a social psychologist at Temple University, may have depended on gossip. When we were out hunting for food (and avoiding those who might have been hunting us), we had to pick up on certain facts in order to come home to our families alive. Those who knew more became intense objects of interest, because they were more likely to have full bellies instead of winding up in a saber-tooth tiger’s belly. “There are social, material and psychological advantages to knowing about those who hold resources,” he said. “Who is reliable? Who is generous? How do they behave? We learn what to believe and how to behave from gossip.”

It also might come from our need to belong, which is a strong drive among humans, since we’re social animals. Maybe you’re out somewhere with friends or colleagues, and feeling a little bored, a little on the outskirts of the action, so you strike up a conversation with a small group about a mutual acquaintance. “When you share gossip with someone, you are telling that person you trust them with sensitive information,” said Frank McAndrew, a psychology professor at Knox College, “This makes it more likely that they, in turn, will share sensitive information with you, creating a stronger bond.”

I still think the nasty sort of gossip about people you know is just that. Nasty, cruel and destructive. But talking about Britney Spears’ underpants? Now, that’s just fun. And I’ll be less likely to become dinner for a saber-tooth tiger.

So what do you think? Do you like to gossip? Do you limit it to celebrities, or is everyone you know fair game?

(Source for some info: Allure)