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Study: the right way to gossip. Are you doing it?

News Desk

Sep 24

“Everyone gossips,” says Frank McAndrew, a professor of psychology in the United States while talking to NBC News. He discusses a new study that determines how much humans gossip and how it affects them socially – and how there is a right way to do it.

McAndrew said that people who gained social knowledge (aka gossiped) were far ahead than people who were not interested. People who didn’t indulge in discussing other people “were not good at attracting and keeping mates or maintaining alliances.”

Women tend to engage in more neutral gossip than men

 Gossip isn’t “inherently bad,” he suggested and in a study with 467 adults over two-five days, researchers came to a conclusion on how to gossip the right way. They recorded conversations that these people had, and classified anything they heard about a person who was not there as gossip. It was coded as positive, negative or neutral. The data suggested that almost everyone gossiped (only 34 out of 467 individuals did not gossip at all) and majority of the gossip (75 percent) was neutral. Women engaged in more neutral gossip than men.

According to psychologists, a “good gossiper” is a person who is trusted with information and uses it in a responsible way. For example, telling a friend information that might save them from a bad investment or a bad marriage. A bad gossiper shares information in order to get ahead or to be plain malicious, discussing a person’s shortcomings or trouble in their lives for the sake of talking.

Hit program based on an anonymous gossip girl

To be a good gossiper:

1. Think twice

Are you breaking someone’s trust by giving away this information or stabbing them in the back? Are you doing it responsibly for valid reasons?

2. Don’t gossip for personal gain

If you have something to gain by releasing information about someone else, don’t do it. You most likely are not doing it for the right reasons

3. Don’t distort facts

Do not exaggerate, add details or change the story. If you have to tell a story, tell it exactly how it happened


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