Pass it along

Gossip has a pretty bad rep, despite the fact that we do it, at least a bit.

But an essay in The Atlantic suggests itmay not be all that bad: “Gossip may make us better people. A team of Dutch researchers reported that hearing gossip about others made research subjects more reflective; positive gossip inspired self-improvement efforts, and negative gossip made people prouder of themselves. In another study, the worse participants felt upon hearing a piece of negative gossip, the more likely they were to say they had learned a lesson from it. Negative gossip can also have a prosocial effect on those who are gossiped about. Researchers at Stanford and UC Berkeley found that once people were ostracized from a group due to reputed selfishness, they reformed their ways in an attempt to regain the approval of the people they had alienated.”

The story suggests that among our early ancestors, gossipmay have been a strong bonding element that led to the development of language.