Page Six Has Been Around For Over A Million Years
In one form or another. Some of the seminars and poster presentations I really enjoy at the ev psych conferences I attend are on gossip. Robin Dunbar, author of Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, is a primary researcher in the area. Here, from The New York Times, nature writer Richard Conniff blogs about Dunbar's work:
University of Liverpool anthropologist Robin Dunbar has argued that gossip is the main reason, after eating, that we open our mouths in the first place. In a study among the presumably intellectual denizens of a university dining hall (a “refectory,” rather), he found that the conversationalists paid scant attention to ideas. Instead, they spent 70 percent of the time talking about one another. No other topic took up more than 10 percent of the conversation, and most, including “all the topics you might consider to be of great moment in our intellectual lives, namely politics, religion, ethics, culture and work” rated only 2 or 3 percent.Dunbar suggests that it was roughly the same around Pleistocene campfires — and even among our simian ancestors — because understanding social relationships has always been essential for survival. Though they are constitutionally unable to shriek, “Oh, my god, tell me more,” even monkeys and apes practice a kind of gossip. They do it by eavesdropping. They pay acute attention to the behavior of the animals around them, and they use this social knowledge to win friends and influence fellow primates. They also spend much of their time together grooming, and paying attention to who grooms whom — a way of bonding that can be crucial when it comes to sharing food or seeking help in a fight.
For humans, the trouble with grooming as a form of bonding was that it took up too much time, especially as we evolved to live in much larger social groups. Dunbar argues that we developed large brains, and the unique power of speech, as a more efficient way of managing social intelligence. “In a nutshell,” he writes in his book, “Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language,” “I am suggesting that language evolved to allow us to gossip.”
If Dunbar is right, then gossiping, like grooming, ought to make us feel good. And circumstantial evidence suggests that it does. Hence the addiction among teenagers to Instant Messenger, and the need people of all ages feel to need to chitchat with friends, family or fellow workers by cellphone even while driving alone in the car or walking through a crowd of strangers on a city street.
Despite gossip’s bad reputation, studies suggest that it’s actually negative only about 5 percent of the time. (Even our Christmas party gossip about adultery mostly focused on how the wife and kids were handling it.) Far more often, it’s just idle chatter: “Did you see that blouse she wore yesterday?” or “He’s got a nice way with words … .” The content of such gossip may matter less than the message of social inclusion. At least in the workplace, studies suggest that gossip is also accurate 75 to 95 percent of the time. There are practical reasons why both things should be true: When you spread malicious gossip, your listeners unconsciously attribute the same negative traits or behaviors to you, a boomerang effect researchers call “spontaneous trait transference.” Likewise, researchers say spreading false information on the company grapevine is relatively uncommon because it inevitably discredits the source.
Prager used to talk about how gossip was a sin, but never explained where the line was between information worth sharing and hurtful chatter.
Crid at December 12, 2006 5:21 PM
Prager pretends to be rational, but he's anything but. The guy shows all the grasp of science and ability for rational thought of a drunken sand flea.
Amy Alkon at December 12, 2006 11:56 PM
Oh, calm down.
Crid at December 13, 2006 4:20 AM
Crid...do you have a crush on Dennis Prager?
Amy Alkon at December 13, 2006 5:42 AM
How come people think admiration is an all-or-nothing thing? My big crushes are Zappa and Paglia, though that new boy Hitchens is pretty cute, too. These are flawed humans who sometimes bungle things I think are important... So what? *Nobody's* perfect.
If you listened to Prager's show for a few weeks (which I don't actually recommend) and kept a chart, you'd be surprised how often you agree with him. You'd still know he was a blowhard, and you'd still know when he was wrong.
Crid at December 13, 2006 8:50 AM
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