Why We Gossip

"Research on casual conversations reveals that more than 60 percent of informal conversations are gossip or the exchange of related social information. Dunbar defines exchange of social information as conversations about people and relationships (e.g., who's related to whom, who's allied with whom, who's married to whom), whereas a more narrowly defined subset of social conversations constitutes pure gossip, containing an element of judgment or evaluation of a not-present third party."

"If you're like most people, you don't like to think of yourself as a gossip, so your estimate of the percentage of your own conversations devoted to gossip is probably in the single-digit range, if not zero. Yet research on casual conversations reveals that more than 60 percent of informal conversations are gossip or the exchange of related social information."

Rod begins his new job anxious about workplace gossip after experiencing personal harm from rumors at his previous employer. He worries that his new coworkers will engage in the same destructive gossip patterns he encountered before. The narrative raises the question of how prevalent gossip actually is in workplace conversations. Research reveals that more than 60 percent of informal conversations consist of gossip or exchange of social information about people and relationships. However, most people significantly underestimate their own participation in gossip, typically estimating single-digit percentages. Social information exchange includes conversations about relationships and connections, while pure gossip specifically involves judgment or evaluation of absent third parties.

Read at Psychology Today