When Stuart Sanderson was gossiping to her best friend about the latest scandals Monday night, she didn’t know that, while she was playing she said she was also participating in the human equivalent of “social grooming,” the method primates use to communicate.
Sanderson, a freshman in communication, isn’t the only one spending her time talking idly about the personal affairs of those she knows — or doesn’t know, in cases like whether Jennifer Aniston really said that to Angelina Jolie or how Spencer Pratt really called Heidi Montag his employee. The act is natural. We all do it, but why? Some psychologists and sociologists argue that gossiping is not just a past time, its human nature.
Relationships have always been important in every society and culture. Primates used to groom each other to establish relationships, but according to professor of psychology David Martin, “Our society has gotten too big for that.”
In today’s society, people cannot just go around grooming one another, Martin said. Instead, humans have developed a form of “verbal grooming” they rely upon to form the social networks that operate within societies.
Psychologist Robin Dunbar examined gossip as a human instinct.
“Gossip is part of our social hardwiring,” Dunbar said. “Language evolved to allow us to gossip [and] replace the physical mutual grooming, because physical grooming became too time-consuming for the larger human social networks.”
Groups of primates usually consist of 50 to 55 primates. In this relatively intimate environment, it is easy for primates to groom most of the other primates, Dunbar has said. In a group of hundreds or thousands of people, it would be impossible to physically groom everyone in a timely manner.
To make up for this loss in communication, language evolved. Now humans use language to talk to and about each other to form the same social bonds that grooming forms.
“That theory is a little bizarre, but it makes sense,” Peyton McDaniel, a freshman in agricultural business, said. “People do communicate to form bonds, and gossip is definitely a form of communication.”
Not all psychologists see gossip as a form of grooming, but still consider it a human instinct.
According to James Kalat, a professor of psychology, living in a society is all about reciprocation. It’s a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours‚” deal. People exchange favors.
“In order for that system to work, people keep track of who is returning favors and who is taking favors without returning them,” Kalat said. “Gossiping allows us to do that.”
Logan Kaznowski, a freshman in chemistry, said gossiping is natural because “people are always looking to gain something.”
“Gossiping allows them to figure out who the best source is for personal gain,” Kaznowski said.
Whether it is to get ahead or to form relationships with people, gossip is everywhere. Everyone is involved with it, whether they are doing the gossiping or they are the subject of the gossip.
“I didn’t realize that every time I talked about someone I was picking bugs out of their hair in a way,” Sanderson said.
