by Russell Newton

Gossip, Chitchat and Communication

Gossip can serve a purpose, such as discussing important matters of food, shelter, and the well-being of the group or tribe. It can also serve no purpose at all and simply act to familiarize people with each other. It doesn’t have to be negative or positive in nature; it just has to fill the air and allow people to interact. Whatever the case, relationships are being formed and cemented on the basis of something we tend to overlook or downplay as negative—simple gossip and chit-chat.

How to Gossip, Chit-Chat, and Communicate

When we think about gossip, we think about mean teenage girls whispering to each other, pointing at someone, and then laughing. That’s certainly one version of it, and sometimes, adults aren’t much better.

Gossiping is when you talk about other people when they’re not present, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be in a negative light, and nor does it have to be about something negative. It’s just talking about relationships, connections, who is doing what, and why that might be. You don’t have to talk about the adulterous relationships or scandalous connections. There are a few surprising truths about the act of gossiping that can benefit your quest for likability.

Engaging in gossip and what appears to be idle chit-chat can cement a relationship. The truth is that the act of gossiping is a highly pro-social and bonding activity, and it’s not just something that has been observed in humans.

Gossip as Grooming

In 1991, behavioral psychologist Robin Dunbar put forth a theory about human relationships he made after observing chimpanzees in “Functional Significance of Social Grooming in Primates.” Chimpanzees are one species of many mammals that engage in what is known as social grooming. You know this to be when chimpanzees pick the bugs out of each other’s fur and eat them. You also know this to be when your mother used to fix your hair and arrange your shirt collars just as you were about to leave.

Social grooming increases the amount of stability and cohesion in any given group, and it has also been found to be indicative of social structure and hierarchies, with alpha males receiving more grooming and everyone else assuming predetermined roles and positions. This grooming ritual cements social bonds. It also ensures that everybody has their place in the social hierarchy. It’s a form of social lubrication that maintains harmony among chimpanzees. It is how chimps become familiar and comfortable with each other and how trust is created. Chimps, of course, are mostly nonverbal, and thus their communication must come in different forms.

Humans haven’t needed to engage in social grooming for many years, but Dunbar proposed that to replace the stabilizing effects of social grooming, humans instead began to gossip and chit-chat about others to mimic the same benefits. Gossip helps us relate to others and maintain relationships in the same way social grooming does for chimpanzees. It fills the same gap for what we do when we are sitting idly with nothing in particular to do but pass the time.

We get to understand other people’s thoughts and motivations and see what we have in common. And—this is why gossip has a negative impression—we also get to talk about our roles in various social hierarchies and why we are above others within it.

Gossip can serve a purpose, such as discussing important matters of food, shelter, and the well-being of the group or tribe. It can also serve no purpose at all and simply act to familiarize people with each other. It doesn’t have to be negative or positive in nature; it just has to fill the air and allow people to interact. Whatever the case, relationships are being formed and cemented on the basis of something we tend to overlook or downplay as negative—simple gossip and chit-chat.

Gossip always has the option of leading somewhere large and intimate, no matter how small it can start. It also doesn’t necessarily have to be negative in nature, and even if it is, it will still help you bond. When you engage with people in idle chit-chat and discuss people, relationships, and shared situations, that’s what leads to bonding.

Yes, that even includes banal, boring small talk. That can certainly be classified as gossip, and while you may hate it, there is no reason for small talk to remain small, vague, and uninteresting. Allow yourself to be exposed and open to other people. Ask questions and divulge information about yourself, just like you learned in earlier chapters on how to treat people like friends and break stereotyping. Establish a mutual level of comfort and familiarity. If nothing else, it gets people to drop their guard.

Another 1998 study harped on the importance of staying positive with gossip. With spontaneous trait transference, communicators take on the qualities they describe in others. We covered this briefly earlier in the book in relation to giving compliments and taking on the traits that you are complimenting others with.

But it’s a fair bit more important in our new context because it concerns everyday communication and avoiding being seen negatively. Researchers asked actors to read a script where they would describe other people. These scripts varied from pleasant and positive to downright negative and nasty. Other participants would then pay attention to the person reading and give their assessment as to that person’s likability.

It turned out that the people observing the reader transferred the traits that the person was describing to the reader. For example, if the reader characterized someone as nasty, insensitive, arrogant, or rude, the other people in the study observing the reader reported that the actor exhibited those same traits. Similarly, when the reader was tasked to read the script where they would describe the other person in glowing terms, the bystanders would likewise report that the reader was positive, cheerful, and bubbly.

If you’re not talking about yourself, people will make judgments about you based on how you describe other people. They equate how you read other people with your own personality traits. If you ever find yourself in a conversation and the flow of the talk veers toward talking about third parties, keep this study in mind.

Gossipers, pay attention. Whatever traits you describe in others, people will transfer to you. If you talk about someone being lazy, people will more likely think you’re lazy. If you describe others as engaging and cheerful, they will also think that about you. Obviously, to make this work best for you, you should only describe others as positive, encouraging, and overall likable people, even if you’re talking about somebody who’s downright unpleasant. There are still some pleasant parts to that person’s personality or life story you can choose to dwell on.

You can even choose better and gentler words. Instead of describing someone as fat and bloated, describing them as a little bigger or round has a positive impact on how people will perceive you. The way you choose your words packs a lot of value and judgment.

This brings us to one of the large caveats about gossip: bad gossip is bad for people’s perceptions of you and your likability. You see it with spontaneous trait transference, and you also see it in “Is Gossip Power? The Inverse Relationships Between Gossip, Power, and Likability” from 2011, where Sally Farley explored and expanded on Dunbar’s findings on social grooming. She found that what she deemed “prolific” gossipers were much less liked than non-gossipers, and those who were negative gossipers were liked the least of all. Out of a scale of 117, negative gossipers scored an average of 37 for likability while non-gossipers scored an average of 47. In addition, prolific gossipers were seen as socially weaker and with less influence.

This seems to contradict Dunbar’s earlier findings on the essentiality of gossip and idle chit-chat, but on the topic, Farley stated, “Perhaps high gossipers are individuals who we welcome into our social networks for fear of losing the opportunity to learn information, but we tend to keep them at arm’s length.”

Farley’s study also seems to contradict our final upcoming finding and study on gossip, which is that negativity, while negative, is extremely effective in bonding people together.

In 2006, Bosson published “Interpersonal Chemistry Through Negativity: Bonding by Sharing Negative Attitudes About Others,” which suggested that bonding over a shared dislike of people is effective and quick. Their study found that people and their closest friends routinely had a tendency for strongly negative shared attitudes toward other people, and the more negative, the more close the friends.

Overall, with existing friends and strangers alike, the finding was clear that “people expressed stronger beliefs that they could be friends if they thought they shared their negative evaluation.” Just think about all the studies on similarity of values, virtues, and interests. Why wouldn’t this extend to similarity of dislikes? After all, we’re just after similarity, no matter the direction it flows. Think about how easy it is to complain together, or ally against a common enemy. These all function on the same principle of intense, powerful matching emotions amplifying each other.

The overall lesson on gossip and idle chit-chat is that it can indeed serve as an entryway for bonding, but there is a very fine line about what topics you can actually stick to. Engage in what you might consider meaningless chatter, and make sure not to insult people too much behind their backs—unless, of course, you are sure that the other person will agree with you!