Social psychologist: gossiping is not a character flaw. Its a social skill
The Vanderpump Rules cheating Scandoval has been in the public consciousness for the better part of the past three months. Some people, like me and my friends, are engrossed, while others either don’t care or make a point of saying how much they don’t care as if reality is irrelevant (it’s not). Like several other recent pieces, a new Yahoo! Life article examines why we care about this, but takes it a step further and contextualizes gossip as a part of socializing. Gossiping “is not a character flaw. It’s a social skill.” Love to hear it.
“I firmly believe that our fascination with gossip is part of human nature, it’s part of who we are. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a social skill,” social psychologist Frank McAndrew tells Yahoo Life. “It’s as much like breathing as anything else.”
While cavemen couldn’t have anticipated the inner workings of reality television, nor the scandals that cameras would capture, McAndrew explains that gossip and the knowledge that comes with it has been important throughout human history.
“People who were fascinated at the private lives of other people simply did better than people who didn’t, and over time, those genes are the ones that got passed down to us,” he says. “So like it or not, we’re the descendants of busybodies. It’s just in our nature to be that way.”
Meltem Yucel, postdoctoral associate at Duke University’s Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, notes that it plays an important role in our relationships and interactions with others.
“When someone gossips, they’re signaling to others which rules they care about,” she tells Yahoo Life. “Negatively gossiping with your friends about people cheating can show others that we think cheating is not OK — we wouldn’t cheat ourselves, and that we would not tolerate our friends cheating on their partners, or our partner cheating on us.”
It’s a “safer” way to enforce rules and standards without sacrificing personal relationships, she says, because of the distance between audiences and the people engulfed in drama on screen.
“When you gossip about people you actually know, it’s a risky thing to do … You might have some repercussions,” Yucel says, noting that taboo topics like sexual relationships inherently draw more interest. “These kinds of situations also inspire a lot of questions from us. What would I do if I knew my friend did this? What would I do if somebody did this to me? What would I do if my friend knew and didn’t tell me? So it also lets us put ourselves in these situations and again, in somewhat of a safer way, because this isn’t happening to us.”
But also, celebrities matter to us. Despite the one-sided nature of parasocial relationships with TV stars and celebrities, McAndrew assures audiences that there is a real connection that drives the curiosity and intrigue displayed during these scandals.
“You know more about a lot of celebrities than you probably know about your next door neighbor,” he says. “And that means they are part of your world, and that’s why we need to know more about them.”
I agree with this theory on its face and also the deeper analysis in the article. Everyone gossips, whether they want to admit it or not. Even if you don’t gossip among friends or colleagues, gossiping to one person — like to significant other or your mom or that one person you know that doesn’t know any of the other people you know — that counts. People are curious about other people, people think about other people, people compare other people, and yes, people judge other people. The article makes the point that gossiping signals what rules and norms we care about, like cheating, but I would also argue that it shows who we do and don’t care about based on who we gossip to. For example, someone might engage in gossip about their HOA (like my mom does), but refrain from gossiping about someone with whom they actually have a close personal relationship. And I think the social skill aspect comes into play because there’s sometimes a delicate calculation to be made about what’s appropriate to share based on the subject and the audience. Anyway, all this to say that gossip is a natural part of our society and a lot of it — like the VPR scandal — is relatively low stakes compared to a lot of the egregious stuff that is such a staple of our news today.
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