Men like to gossip, too

It is generally accepted that praise or criticism "behind the back" is a predominantly female "occupation". But it turns out that men love to gossip and discuss people "behind their backs" no less.

Indeed, there has always been an opinion that gossip is the domain of women and older people (especially old ladies). Scientists representing the University of California, Riverside, have refuted this myth and proved that even young men like to gossip.

Hundreds of women and men, with an average age of 18-58, took part in the study. Each participant was equipped with a portable sound recording device that recorded sounds – but not all of them. As a rule, excerpts of the carrier’s dialogues with other people were recorded. The recorded information was then studied for the degree of “gossip”: by the term “gossip” the scientists meant any conversation during which an outsider, a person not present in the dialogue, was mentioned. It did not matter how this person was spoken about – well, badly, or neutrally.

Upon completion of the study, the scientists were able to identify more than four thousand gossips. They were divided into categories, highlighting those that involved famous people or little-known individuals. The main topics of gossip were separately identified, as well as the gender and age of the "gossips".

The results revealed that, in general, people don't spend that much time gossiping - about 14% of all conversations. Most of the time, there was neutral discussion of acquaintances, followed by bad statements, and only in last place - positive ones. Thus, gossips are the least likely to praise someone, more often to condemn or simply mention them in conversation.

People pay a fair amount of attention to celebrities, but they still discuss acquaintances more often – as much as nine times.

And one more observation: introverts gossip significantly less often than extroverts.

Interestingly, people of all ages like to talk about people they know and don't know. Young participants in the experiment were as active in gossiping as older people. However, the difference was that young people provided more negative information. There were no significant differences in terms of social status: people gossiped in equal numbers, regardless of their social status and level of education.

As for the gender difference, both women and men "spread gossip" about equally. However, a little more negativity came from the female side. Men more often expressed themselves either slightly disapprovingly, or neutrally, or positively.

The study was conducted as part of a study of evolutionary psychology. Scientists are confident that gossip is an important tool that plays a major role in the formation of a reputation in a community and in supporting the spread of indirect reciprocity.

Information is available at journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1948550619837000?journalCode=sppa