Why do we gossip?

Last week I saw a little girl on public transport. Judging by her appearance, I suppose that she is in her late adolescent years (probably 16 or 17). The first moment my eyes fell on her, she was scrolling through her phone a bit hysterically. As most people were doing quite the same thing, I didn’t take much attention to her until an unexpected event happened.

Her phone rang once; she didn’t pick it up. And it rang a second time, she answered rather angrily. But didn’t say a word, after uttering a harsh “Hello.” However, her silence didn’t prevent her emotions from outrage, when tears started to fall down her cheek and, ultimately, she cried out, “Why do you all think I am with him, he is my best friend’s boyfriend. I would never do something like that.”

After this sentence, she ended the call. However, her phone didn’t stop ringing. I assume she received more than 10 calls during the trip. She couldn’t control her mood… I was a bit worried, and I approached her to ask if she needed help. Then she confided the whole story to me ―or at least her version of the facts.

According to her, her best friends don’t speak with her for one month. They never told her the reason why they stopped hanging out with her until she received a message the week before and was informed that she slept with her friend’s boyfriend. She never knew who spread this information, but she had no relationship at all with the dude. They only coincided at a party to which her sister invited her.

Although this kind of story is common among teenagers, hearing it made me think a lot. Like most of you, I witnessed many events in which people forge bad stories about someone. And I always wondered why we enjoy doing this.

Why do people enjoy talking about us behind our backs?

Before getting further, I need to make a quick observation: Talking about someone while they are not present doesn’t need to be intentionally bad. In fact, it would be rather weird if someone never talked about another person while they are not present.

There is a huge difference between conversing about someone and gossiping. If you want to know more about this subject, consider reading this book, this article, and that paper.

Gossiping is surprisingly one of the most common types of conversation. According to this recent research, 65 % of our conversations are gossips. Gossiping is in our genes, it is shared by people of all ages, all cultures, and all times. We have evolved but it has adapted to each lifestyle we have adopted. During the prehistoric period, it helped create bonds, and it was a way to discover people who had bad intentions or were not that trustworthy by judging their behavior within groups.

Although we continue to gossip for quite the same reason, we use more complex tools (WhatsApp groups, WhatsApp messages, Facebook groups, calls, messengers, etc.) and the intentions are increasingly becoming more egocentric (jealousy, envy, the satisfaction of one’s evil thoughts, and so on).

Gossiping is a very complex type of communication. The gossipers affirm their intelligence by sneaking in information. By gossiping, they confirm the feelings, thoughts, and emotions that they have towards someone or a group, and they convince others to see this person or group the same way.

People that are gossiped on more often in a group are generally the most popular ones, the most powerful ones, or the most different ones. Why? Because information about these people is much more valuable.

We don’t only gossip to spread information, but we gossip to demonstrate how intelligent and well-connected we are, this is why we tend to gossip about people who are socially important.

Besides, we gossip to spread secrets.

The more successful a person is the more they seem to have secrets as to how they protect their status or how they come to that status in the first place.

When someone is different, most people want to know why they are that way.

Therefore, the person who discovers the reasons behind someone’s unconventional life or attitude (or pretends to discover them), seems to be a very intelligent person.

Nevertheless, the problem with gossiping is that it can be very toxic and may ruin someone’s life. Talking behind someone’s back allows us to lie about this person without any preoccupation because they are not there to defend themselves. Rather intentionally or not, by gossiping we usually ended up spreading false information about people.

Therefore, whenever you feel like talking about someone on their back try to understand why you feel like doing so: Is it because you are afraid of their potential reaction? Is it because you want to lie about them? Is it because you hate them?

If it is none of these reasons, maybe it would be better to talk to them in person. If you think that those are the reasons why you want to gossip about someone, it would be better to not talk about them at all because your information is more likely going to be biased.

Do you think it is bad to gossip? Why? Do you know someone whose credibility was destroyed due to false information shared on their back? Have you experienced it yourself?