January 4, 2010 • 21 mins
Gossip is often linked to women and tends to get a bad rap, but in fact, men like to gossip, too. And it's not all bad. Tune in to this episode of Stuff Mom Never Told You to get the dirt on gossip and gender.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told you?
From House top works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen, I'm Molly. Oh I'm gonna let
(00:21):
you in in a little secret. And I love secrets. And
I don't know if it's going to be a poor
reflection on my character or not, but I'm just gonna
be honest with you and all of our wonderful listeners
out there. I loved to gossip. Oh man, I used too.
I really loved a gossip. And um, you know, last
night was the House to works dot com holiday part
(00:41):
holiday party. Even though you might be listening to this
in January, I just all I wanted from the holiday party.
All I wanted was good gossip to come out of it. Yes,
dear listeners, because Molly left the party early, leaving me
and some other people there to watch out for gossip
tidbits for the day after, and I had a few
to share with you there. Well, no, I can't. That's
(01:05):
the point about gossip though, Molly, it's secret. I can't
just spill you know, you can't just tell everybody you're
a bit of gossip or else. Then it's common knowledge.
And that's the fun about gossip is no one else
is supposed to know. Here's some gossip, guys. Okay, Kristin
can't read, I know, I just Molly just draws me pictures,
picture cue cards. I hold up. I hold up like
(01:25):
a woman talking, and that's how she knows. It's the
Gossip Podcast. Yeah. Every now and then things kind of
get boring around here at how Stuffwork dot Com Surprise,
and we try to think up fake gossip to start.
We never actually do it, though, but I guess that's
more like a rumor, which I think now would be
a good time to kind of talk about what exactly
is gossip and how is it different from rumor? Like
(01:47):
what are we talking about when we're talking about gossip? Okay,
Because I will say when I was reading the definition
of gossip, I felt a lot better about myself. All right,
because I'm gonna start with the thing that was most
interesting to me. Um they You know, people have had
to define gossip before they can study it. And one
thing that researchers have said that it's not gossip unless
(02:07):
you know the person in real life. So all of
the John and Kate Goslin stuff that I love to
read about not gossip. Not gossip. When I find out
weird facts about celebrity, you know, children, marriages, affairs, alleged affairs,
(02:27):
those are my favorite alleged blind items, it's not gossip.
I don't know those people, even though I feel like
I do, and that would be more like rumor. Right, Yeah,
it's not something that people care about when it comes
to gossip. Here are some ground rules for defining gossip
because all these researchers have tried to pin down a definition.
It's kind of hard. It's prizingly hard to define what
(02:47):
exactly gossip is. But here are a few stipulations, such as,
the conversation takes place in private. So really, whatever tidbits
about the holiday party I could share right now wouldn't
be be gossip because it's not in private. So this
is how you're gonna get around everything in the future.
We're just gonna podcast about it. And when you gossip,
you're transmitting information as though it were fact, but it
hasn't been confirmed that it is factual, and that's usually
(03:10):
why you always start off a good gossip with now
I heard exactly. Sometimes, like let's say, if I saw
something happening and I just told it to you secretly,
that's not really gossip because I sat with my own eyes.
But if I speculated about something that I saw, if
I was like if I saw just someone stumbling but
didn't wait to see if it's just because they tripped
(03:31):
over a shoelace. But I came to you and said,
I think that person is drunk, that's gossip. Yeah, because
one aspect of gossip is that you're usually passing some
kind of moral judgment about the person you're gossiping about.
So I'd be like, why is that person drunk at
nine am? By that person? Do you mean me, Molly?
This is water in my cup? Okay, although you are clumsy,
(03:53):
I'm very clumsy to an embarrassing extent. Uh. And then
at some point you compare your self to the person
being gossip about, and you usually consider yourself superior to
the subject, Like when Molly's passed around all these tidbits
about me, you know, drinking at work, because she takes
some moral high ground and I'm really proud of the
(04:13):
fact that I can read. And by the way, that's
a total joke people, and is please, yeah, let's not
start that. But we gossipl on it. We gossip a
lot though, men and women alike. Uh. Research suggests that
adults spend between one five into two thirds of conversational
time gossiping, but only five percent of that is negative gossip.
(04:36):
See that's the part I don't believe. Like I can
believe that two thirds of my conversational time is spent gossiping,
but I feel like a lot more than five percent
of it's negative Molly. Maybe that's just the type of
gossip you are, but um, you know, the fact that
they've come up with this really sort of weird span
one two thirds, it just points out how hard it
is to steady gossips. You have to take everything in
(04:58):
this podcast to some extent with a grain of sob
because it's impossible to study gossip right, but so many
people have tried to study it is something that sociologists, linguists,
anthropologists have studied ad nauseum and Uh, I didn't realize this,
but some researchers think that gossips started as a way
for early humans to learn about their neighbors and determine
who they could trust, making it a necessary survival tools,
(05:21):
so they didn't gossip went all the way back to
the dawn of time. I don't know. I think researchers
just trying to justify their gossip by thinking it's a
survival tool. Yeah. One of the best articles that I
ran across was about psychologists who were studying gossip because
they were at a psychology conference and noticed how many
of their colleagues were gossiping. Kind of weird. Well, and
(05:42):
also the way that these researchers study gossip. They can't
do it in a lab like we were saying. All
they do is eavesdrop. Like I would love to be
on a study where all I had to do was eavesdrop. Yes,
I'm so good at it. But you know, Christen, I
think that, um, when you think about gossip, you tend
to think of like caddy girls. I mean, it's called
the gossip girl for a reason. Yeah. Yeah, even though
Chuck baths, come on, he's a girl. If I'm just
(06:04):
saying that, I think it's seen as a very female
thing to do. And that statistic one fift two thirds
of your time spent gossiping. That's regardless of gender. Exactly.
And there is a huge myth, yes myth out there
that women gossip more than men. And I can say
this from personal experience. My guy friends love to gossip
(06:27):
as much as I do. Now. The thing is, though, Molly,
the gossip very differently than you and I might. That's true.
And I also read that men don't realize sometimes that
they are gossip they when they give out private information
because guys don't want to say that they're gossiping because
it's become such a gender term associated with very stereotypical
(06:47):
female habits. So you know, it wouldn't be it wouldn't
be cool, you know, if a guy would never label
himself as a gossip. But but men love to do it. Yes,
And this is according to a very recent study conducted
by Holly Holm, who was a PhD student at the
University of Virginia, and she found that men indulge in
(07:08):
gossip more than women about secret liaisons, enept lovers, and
overpaid colleagues. And they do this because it helps boost
their confidence. Um, you know, women just according to this
this researcher, they're just kind of passing time bonding with
their friends when they are gossiping. They build close relationships
with colleagues. How would say, that's how you and I
(07:29):
got close, Kristen. But according to this study, men use
gossip to boost their own egos because they're just criticizing
other people's behavior and just doing it too, sort of
more self serving, I guess than than female gossip. It's
to show that you're right and others are wrong. And Uh.
This researcher had the men keep a journal, and apparently
(07:49):
men just loved keeping this gossip journal. They just got
so much enjoyment out of writing down all these secrets.
But in addition to gender differences with gossip, we also
have differences as we grow older. UM psychology professor Jeffrey G.
Parker at the University of Michigan studied gossip habits from
(08:12):
adolescence into the late teens, and he found that adolescence
will gossip about half the time that they're that they're
talking to each other eighteen times an hour. Eighteen times
an hour. Yeah, I can't believe that any ager is
don't have anything else to do just texting back and forth. God,
don't we sound old? Uh? And they were about three
(08:33):
times more likely to go us about someone of their
own sex as they were about someone of the opposite sex.
And they were just as likely to talk about other
people's relationships as they were about their own. So it's
very just kind of general. They're just talking not everything.
Everyone's got their nose and everyone else's business. That's like
the definition of high school, right. Um, but girls were
more apt to talk about boys they liked, and the
(08:55):
more popular boys would be talked about the most. Makes sense, however,
even the most popular boys rarely talked about the girls
they liked. And in addition, pairs of boys who are
best friends are also less likely to spend time gossiping
as opposed to pairs of girlfriends. But you know what,
(09:18):
what's kind of interesting is that, um, when the young
women do gossip, it kind of it's sort of empowering
in some way because they talk about people they admire.
According to this researcher, that the conversations you sprinkle with
comments like she's a great dresser, she's so cool around boys,
which shows that they're not doing it for that reason
that the men in the earlier study word to pump
themselves up. That it's more of just sort of a
(09:39):
bonding experience and figuring out who you want to be.
I think. Yeah, And as we grow older, those gender
differences really start to play out even more as girls
continue to use or women continue to use gossip as
a form of social bonding and men start to just
talk shop. Yeah, they're not talking about, well, they know
(10:00):
girls they like. They're talking about sports, figures, politicians, people
in their class. They hardly even know, um, so you
can find out what interests them. So, you know, a guy,
if he's really into golf, has probably had a lot
to gossip about in the wake up all this tiger
Wood stuff. Someone he doesn't know, someone he can feel
morally suppaired to know the difference between right and rome. Yeah,
but once again, I think we do have to underscore
the fact though, that men still are gossiping. It's just
(10:22):
a different type of gossip. And there was another study
that we found from the University of California at Santa
Cruz that analyze the conversations between both female and female
pairs and male male pairs and then mixed pairs of friends,
and I thought that the results were kind of interesting.
They found that negative gossip was more likely to occur
between female pairs and between male pairs or cross gender pairs. Also,
(10:47):
among the females, only negative gossip was more likely to
happen than positive gossip. And on top of that, female
pairers tended to respond to evaluative gossip with highly encouraging comments,
kind of like what you were saying with adolescent girls,
being like, Oh, she's so she's so cool, she's such
a good addresser and uh. But there were no gender
differences within the cross gender pairs associated with any of
(11:09):
the behaviors. So not only do men and women just
gossip differently, but also gossip differently depending on who we're
talking to. Like, the kind of gossip you and I
engage in would be different than the gossip that, say,
me and Chuck from stuff you should know might engage in.
Are you gossiping about me when you talk to Chuck always?
(11:30):
You know? Usually I feel bad when I gossip, and
I think you should feel bad if you're gossiping about me,
unless you are talking about how cool I am. Um.
But what we found in this research is that gossip
is not all bad. No, there are my benefits. You
don't have to feel so guilty for gossiping. And this
will go back to what we're talking about that it
might have evolved as a social tool, right, because the
(11:52):
root of gossip, the word gossip goes back to the
Old English word godsib, meaning person related to one God
or a godparent, and then we have it evolved in
the eighteen hundreds to gossip denoting a man who drink
with friends and the fellowship that they shared, and then
it kind of developed further from there to have this
(12:12):
connotation with women who were family friends and also helped
during childbirth. So they think that with this evolution from
just the general label to it being the woman family
friend who was helping during childbirth, that's when we have
this gendering of gossip, right. But I think that's pretty
cool to note that all of those relationships god parents,
man who drinks with friends, woman who helps with childbirth,
(12:35):
they all do show that that there is a relationship
at the root of gossip. And you know, there there
are some professors of psychology like Ralph ros No from
Temple University who says that if you don't have gossip,
then you're basically socially alienated or indifferent. And it's true
because you know, even here at work, wouldn't you say
that the people who know the most gossip also kind
(12:57):
of have the best handle on what's going on in
the office. Um. And also Jack Levin, who's a PhD
professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern says, for a
real understanding of our social environment, gossip is essential. And
this is why researchers have spent so much time trying
to figure out how and why humans started gossiping, and
(13:20):
because it's such a crucial social tool for making, you know, comparisons,
understanding what is kosher what's not kosher. And I think
the reason that gossip is considered so hurtful is because
it does define who's in, who's out, who knows what's
going on, who doesn't. Um. The Psychology to Day article
that we are looking at says that you know, if
(13:40):
you're considered worthy enough to be gossiped about, you belong
to a group people care about what you're doing. Yeah,
no one's really gonna gossip about, you know, just a
quiet dude in the corner who never really talk to anybody.
So I mean it's it's all about group involvement. And
because you know, in the early days, this would be
a social toil because you needed a group to survive.
(14:01):
But speaking of the office environment, and we usually think
of gossip being a bad thing. You don't want to
be known as the office gossip. That's what we're told. However,
there are some benefits to gossip. Tell me, I need
all the benefits I can get. Well. There was a
(14:21):
study that came out of a state University of New
York that analyzed the difference between in in group settings
analyze the difference between self serving and group oriented gossip,
and their research showed that gossip that was sort of
meant for group purposes was more beneficial than self serving gossip.
(14:42):
So if you're just trashing someone for the sake of
trashing someone, like when I go to the bath when
I write Kristen can't read on the bathroom wall, that's
that's not helping it. It's not gonna help anybody, and
it's gonna make me cry a little bit too. But
if I wasn't gossiping just to trash Kristen, and I
was like, guys, I don't think I think we get
more work done. If we could help Kristin learn how
to read, then maybe our productivity would go up exactly
(15:05):
And um, that would be a weird way to accomplish
more productivity. Yeah it would be, But at least i'd
learned to read. That'd be good. And there was another
recent study from Indian University that looked at gossip in
the workplace and also once again found that there are
some benefits to it as well. Right now, this is
if let's say you're in a staff meeting and all
(15:25):
of a sudden, you know, you're talking about blah blah blah,
and they start talk about like other departments and other people,
and maybe you're feeling a little uncomfortable because you don't
know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
And basically the university just found that sometimes it is
a good thing, sometimes it is a bad thing. Like
let's take the example of Christin reading again, um, because
I love it and I'm really hoping it catches on.
(15:45):
If if our boss were to say Kristen can't read
and so she never gets anything done on time, then yeah,
everyone's gonna learn that Kristen is illiterate. If the boss says, guys,
I'm so proud of Kristin. She can't read yet, but
he's trying really hard to make her letters, then we
would learn that you're a good person and you're trying,
so you'd be redirecting that negative gossip and it's effort.
(16:09):
It's just you can get a read on how people
feel about you, and it can enhance your reputation. Whereas
if I got into that meeting and thought, so sick
of Kristin not being able to read, I have to
do all the podcast research on my own. And then
if I heard someone say Kristen is trying really hard
to learn how to read, then that can enhance your
reputation because I wouldn't be as frustrated with you and
I have to draw all my pictures. Yeah, Tim Hallett,
(16:29):
who conducted this study at I you said, if you're
interested in learning how an organization works, you can look
at the org chart. But people often say, I still
can't tell how things get done and who the prime
movers are. But if you're attentive and you can see
who has the informal status, who's being gossiped about. Because
if I'm if I can't read, but I'm still being discussed,
(16:52):
you're important, then I'm important in some way. I mean,
obviously I'm important. I mean you've gotten fired. If they
didn't need you. So the fact that you're here to
be gossip about out, Yeah, they're saying that's a win.
So that's the fine line this and this all goes
back to to our old podcast about office politics, because
when you say that gossip is a big part of
office politics, because you want to be the person who
someone can come to with really good gossip, but you
(17:14):
don't want to be known as the gossip, right, the
fine line of office gossip. And I don't think that
you always want to be featured in the office gossip.
But if you're never featuring the office gossip, that's the problem.
You're not doing enough. So you want to be talked
about a little bit. So I mean, it's probably not
earth shuttering to everyone, but it's it is a fine
line to walk, Like, do I need to pretend that
(17:36):
I can't read so that people will talk about me more?
I don't know, Molly, that might not be the way
to go. Why am I so hung up on this
illiteracy rumor? I don't know, but I'm gonna squash it
right now. People, I can read. I'm reading right now.
Read a sentence right now? Okay, Well, uh yeah, going
back to our original question of doom, men and women
gossip differently. I think we have realized that, yes, we
(17:58):
do gossip differently. And um, Maxim dot com is wrong
about the fact they say that men don't gossip. They
say that men don't care enough about other people's personal
lives to gossip about them. I am shocked that Maxim
dot com is wrong. And Maxim, look at the research
you guys gossip you just don't call it gossip, but
not that gossip is bad. That's the other thing, you know.
(18:19):
I think gossip. I think God, I need to give
that up for lunch or something. Yeah, but no, I
would just you know what, I would like to bring
back the term god sip. I'm a god. Sup. We'll
see if that works. Yeah, all right, Kristen, let's prove
that we can read by reading some listener mails. All right,
(18:40):
So our first listener mail is from Kathleen. It's about
our podcast. Um do opposites attract? And Um? She writes,
I think your conclusion was pretty correct that we tend
to be attracted to people that are similar to ourselves. However,
my husband and I saw have many opposite traits. I'm
very common he tends to worry about everything. He can
talk for hours and I don't always have something to say, cetera.
(19:00):
But the main reason I felt I need to write
in because Kristen's comments about odors. When I first met
my husband, I loved his smell. When I would arrive
at his house, I could smell him in the air,
and I love smelling his sweatshirts. Okay, that sounds very strange,
and I get the image of dogs sniffing each other here.
I don't know if it was just a soap or
just his natural body owner that I love so much,
and I've either gotten used to smelling it all the
time or its odors change because I don't smell it anymore.
(19:23):
It definitely wasn't a dirty smell, but an earthy one,
and sometimes I can still imagine that wonderful smell. We've
been together for twelve years now, and though I don't
still smell like I did in the beginning, we're still
very happy. And I have to say, every email that
comes in about people sniffing their significant other is just
a great email to read. It is good at a
lot of the people sniff each other. Keep them coming. Um, Well,
(19:43):
I've got an email here from Eric about our Disney
Princesses podcast. He said, I found it interesting that as
I listened to the trials and tribulations that princess worship
could create and mirrored the life of boys too. Molly
mentioned girls being stressed to be beautiful and perfect and
saved the prince, but fall us in the water. But
boys are expected to slay dragons, save the day, and
(20:03):
do the impossible all the time, not to mention the
real social pressure always to always man up and be
a man. I see the princess movies as an opportunity
to talk to my kids. Their friends watch them, and
so my kids wanted to watch them, so I watched
them too. So now I say things like, maybe you're
more like Mulan and you have to pave your own
path in life. Or look at how big a mistake
(20:24):
Aerial made. We can fix it. Thanks for the great work,
keep it up and thank you Eric. So, guys, if
you have any any good gossip um and once again,
I don't drink at work and I can read and
just underscore that, uh, send it our way. Our email
is mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com. During
(20:45):
the week, you can check out all of our juicy
gossip on our gossip blog how to Stuff. Not actually
gossip blog, but sometimes there's gossip on there. If you
read between the uh so yeah check it out, you'll
definitely go now huh how to Stuff. And you can
also read how Gossip Works by Tracy V. Wilson at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(21:10):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
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Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom never told you?
From House top works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen, I'm Molly. Oh I'm gonna let
(00:21):
you in in a little secret. And I love secrets. And
I don't know if it's going to be a poor
reflection on my character or not, but I'm just gonna
be honest with you and all of our wonderful listeners
out there. I loved to gossip. Oh man, I used too.
I really loved a gossip. And um, you know, last
night was the House to works dot com holiday part
(00:41):
holiday party. Even though you might be listening to this
in January, I just all I wanted from the holiday party.
All I wanted was good gossip to come out of it. Yes,
dear listeners, because Molly left the party early, leaving me
and some other people there to watch out for gossip
tidbits for the day after, and I had a few
to share with you there. Well, no, I can't. That's
(01:05):
the point about gossip though, Molly, it's secret. I can't
just spill you know, you can't just tell everybody you're
a bit of gossip or else. Then it's common knowledge.
And that's the fun about gossip is no one else
is supposed to know. Here's some gossip, guys. Okay, Kristin
can't read, I know, I just Molly just draws me pictures,
picture cue cards. I hold up. I hold up like
(01:25):
a woman talking, and that's how she knows. It's the
Gossip Podcast. Yeah. Every now and then things kind of
get boring around here at how Stuffwork dot Com Surprise,
and we try to think up fake gossip to start.
We never actually do it, though, but I guess that's
more like a rumor, which I think now would be
a good time to kind of talk about what exactly
is gossip and how is it different from rumor? Like
(01:47):
what are we talking about when we're talking about gossip? Okay,
Because I will say when I was reading the definition
of gossip, I felt a lot better about myself. All right,
because I'm gonna start with the thing that was most
interesting to me. Um they You know, people have had
to define gossip before they can study it. And one
thing that researchers have said that it's not gossip unless
(02:07):
you know the person in real life. So all of
the John and Kate Goslin stuff that I love to
read about not gossip. Not gossip. When I find out
weird facts about celebrity, you know, children, marriages, affairs, alleged affairs,
(02:27):
those are my favorite alleged blind items, it's not gossip.
I don't know those people, even though I feel like
I do, and that would be more like rumor. Right, Yeah,
it's not something that people care about when it comes
to gossip. Here are some ground rules for defining gossip
because all these researchers have tried to pin down a definition.
It's kind of hard. It's prizingly hard to define what
(02:47):
exactly gossip is. But here are a few stipulations, such as,
the conversation takes place in private. So really, whatever tidbits
about the holiday party I could share right now wouldn't
be be gossip because it's not in private. So this
is how you're gonna get around everything in the future.
We're just gonna podcast about it. And when you gossip,
you're transmitting information as though it were fact, but it
hasn't been confirmed that it is factual, and that's usually
(03:10):
why you always start off a good gossip with now
I heard exactly. Sometimes, like let's say, if I saw
something happening and I just told it to you secretly,
that's not really gossip because I sat with my own eyes.
But if I speculated about something that I saw, if
I was like if I saw just someone stumbling but
didn't wait to see if it's just because they tripped
(03:31):
over a shoelace. But I came to you and said,
I think that person is drunk, that's gossip. Yeah, because
one aspect of gossip is that you're usually passing some
kind of moral judgment about the person you're gossiping about.
So I'd be like, why is that person drunk at
nine am? By that person? Do you mean me, Molly?
This is water in my cup? Okay, although you are clumsy,
(03:53):
I'm very clumsy to an embarrassing extent. Uh. And then
at some point you compare your self to the person
being gossip about, and you usually consider yourself superior to
the subject, Like when Molly's passed around all these tidbits
about me, you know, drinking at work, because she takes
some moral high ground and I'm really proud of the
(04:13):
fact that I can read. And by the way, that's
a total joke people, and is please, yeah, let's not
start that. But we gossipl on it. We gossip a
lot though, men and women alike. Uh. Research suggests that
adults spend between one five into two thirds of conversational
time gossiping, but only five percent of that is negative gossip.
(04:36):
See that's the part I don't believe. Like I can
believe that two thirds of my conversational time is spent gossiping,
but I feel like a lot more than five percent
of it's negative Molly. Maybe that's just the type of
gossip you are, but um, you know, the fact that
they've come up with this really sort of weird span
one two thirds, it just points out how hard it
is to steady gossips. You have to take everything in
(04:58):
this podcast to some extent with a grain of sob
because it's impossible to study gossip right, but so many
people have tried to study it is something that sociologists, linguists,
anthropologists have studied ad nauseum and Uh, I didn't realize this,
but some researchers think that gossips started as a way
for early humans to learn about their neighbors and determine
who they could trust, making it a necessary survival tools,
(05:21):
so they didn't gossip went all the way back to
the dawn of time. I don't know. I think researchers
just trying to justify their gossip by thinking it's a
survival tool. Yeah. One of the best articles that I
ran across was about psychologists who were studying gossip because
they were at a psychology conference and noticed how many
of their colleagues were gossiping. Kind of weird. Well, and
(05:42):
also the way that these researchers study gossip. They can't
do it in a lab like we were saying. All
they do is eavesdrop. Like I would love to be
on a study where all I had to do was eavesdrop. Yes,
I'm so good at it. But you know, Christen, I
think that, um, when you think about gossip, you tend
to think of like caddy girls. I mean, it's called
the gossip girl for a reason. Yeah. Yeah, even though
Chuck baths, come on, he's a girl. If I'm just
(06:04):
saying that, I think it's seen as a very female
thing to do. And that statistic one fift two thirds
of your time spent gossiping. That's regardless of gender. Exactly.
And there is a huge myth, yes myth out there
that women gossip more than men. And I can say
this from personal experience. My guy friends love to gossip
(06:27):
as much as I do. Now. The thing is, though, Molly,
the gossip very differently than you and I might. That's true.
And I also read that men don't realize sometimes that
they are gossip they when they give out private information
because guys don't want to say that they're gossiping because
it's become such a gender term associated with very stereotypical
(06:47):
female habits. So you know, it wouldn't be it wouldn't
be cool, you know, if a guy would never label
himself as a gossip. But but men love to do it. Yes,
And this is according to a very recent study conducted
by Holly Holm, who was a PhD student at the
University of Virginia, and she found that men indulge in
(07:08):
gossip more than women about secret liaisons, enept lovers, and
overpaid colleagues. And they do this because it helps boost
their confidence. Um, you know, women just according to this
this researcher, they're just kind of passing time bonding with
their friends when they are gossiping. They build close relationships
with colleagues. How would say, that's how you and I
(07:29):
got close, Kristen. But according to this study, men use
gossip to boost their own egos because they're just criticizing
other people's behavior and just doing it too, sort of
more self serving, I guess than than female gossip. It's
to show that you're right and others are wrong. And Uh.
This researcher had the men keep a journal, and apparently
(07:49):
men just loved keeping this gossip journal. They just got
so much enjoyment out of writing down all these secrets.
But in addition to gender differences with gossip, we also
have differences as we grow older. UM psychology professor Jeffrey G.
Parker at the University of Michigan studied gossip habits from
(08:12):
adolescence into the late teens, and he found that adolescence
will gossip about half the time that they're that they're
talking to each other eighteen times an hour. Eighteen times
an hour. Yeah, I can't believe that any ager is
don't have anything else to do just texting back and forth. God,
don't we sound old? Uh? And they were about three
(08:33):
times more likely to go us about someone of their
own sex as they were about someone of the opposite sex.
And they were just as likely to talk about other
people's relationships as they were about their own. So it's
very just kind of general. They're just talking not everything.
Everyone's got their nose and everyone else's business. That's like
the definition of high school, right. Um, but girls were
more apt to talk about boys they liked, and the
(08:55):
more popular boys would be talked about the most. Makes sense, however,
even the most popular boys rarely talked about the girls
they liked. And in addition, pairs of boys who are
best friends are also less likely to spend time gossiping
as opposed to pairs of girlfriends. But you know what,
(09:18):
what's kind of interesting is that, um, when the young
women do gossip, it kind of it's sort of empowering
in some way because they talk about people they admire.
According to this researcher, that the conversations you sprinkle with
comments like she's a great dresser, she's so cool around boys,
which shows that they're not doing it for that reason
that the men in the earlier study word to pump
themselves up. That it's more of just sort of a
(09:39):
bonding experience and figuring out who you want to be.
I think. Yeah, And as we grow older, those gender
differences really start to play out even more as girls
continue to use or women continue to use gossip as
a form of social bonding and men start to just
talk shop. Yeah, they're not talking about, well, they know
(10:00):
girls they like. They're talking about sports, figures, politicians, people
in their class. They hardly even know, um, so you
can find out what interests them. So, you know, a guy,
if he's really into golf, has probably had a lot
to gossip about in the wake up all this tiger
Wood stuff. Someone he doesn't know, someone he can feel
morally suppaired to know the difference between right and rome. Yeah,
but once again, I think we do have to underscore
the fact though, that men still are gossiping. It's just
(10:22):
a different type of gossip. And there was another study
that we found from the University of California at Santa
Cruz that analyze the conversations between both female and female
pairs and male male pairs and then mixed pairs of friends,
and I thought that the results were kind of interesting.
They found that negative gossip was more likely to occur
between female pairs and between male pairs or cross gender pairs. Also,
(10:47):
among the females, only negative gossip was more likely to
happen than positive gossip. And on top of that, female
pairers tended to respond to evaluative gossip with highly encouraging comments,
kind of like what you were saying with adolescent girls,
being like, Oh, she's so she's so cool, she's such
a good addresser and uh. But there were no gender
differences within the cross gender pairs associated with any of
(11:09):
the behaviors. So not only do men and women just
gossip differently, but also gossip differently depending on who we're
talking to. Like, the kind of gossip you and I
engage in would be different than the gossip that, say,
me and Chuck from stuff you should know might engage in.
Are you gossiping about me when you talk to Chuck always?
(11:30):
You know? Usually I feel bad when I gossip, and
I think you should feel bad if you're gossiping about me,
unless you are talking about how cool I am. Um.
But what we found in this research is that gossip
is not all bad. No, there are my benefits. You
don't have to feel so guilty for gossiping. And this
will go back to what we're talking about that it
might have evolved as a social tool, right, because the
(11:52):
root of gossip, the word gossip goes back to the
Old English word godsib, meaning person related to one God
or a godparent, and then we have it evolved in
the eighteen hundreds to gossip denoting a man who drink
with friends and the fellowship that they shared, and then
it kind of developed further from there to have this
(12:12):
connotation with women who were family friends and also helped
during childbirth. So they think that with this evolution from
just the general label to it being the woman family
friend who was helping during childbirth, that's when we have
this gendering of gossip, right. But I think that's pretty
cool to note that all of those relationships god parents,
man who drinks with friends, woman who helps with childbirth,
(12:35):
they all do show that that there is a relationship
at the root of gossip. And you know, there there
are some professors of psychology like Ralph ros No from
Temple University who says that if you don't have gossip,
then you're basically socially alienated or indifferent. And it's true
because you know, even here at work, wouldn't you say
that the people who know the most gossip also kind
(12:57):
of have the best handle on what's going on in
the office. Um. And also Jack Levin, who's a PhD
professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern says, for a
real understanding of our social environment, gossip is essential. And
this is why researchers have spent so much time trying
to figure out how and why humans started gossiping, and
(13:20):
because it's such a crucial social tool for making, you know, comparisons,
understanding what is kosher what's not kosher. And I think
the reason that gossip is considered so hurtful is because
it does define who's in, who's out, who knows what's
going on, who doesn't. Um. The Psychology to Day article
that we are looking at says that you know, if
(13:40):
you're considered worthy enough to be gossiped about, you belong
to a group people care about what you're doing. Yeah,
no one's really gonna gossip about, you know, just a
quiet dude in the corner who never really talk to anybody.
So I mean it's it's all about group involvement. And
because you know, in the early days, this would be
a social toil because you needed a group to survive.
(14:01):
But speaking of the office environment, and we usually think
of gossip being a bad thing. You don't want to
be known as the office gossip. That's what we're told. However,
there are some benefits to gossip. Tell me, I need
all the benefits I can get. Well. There was a
(14:21):
study that came out of a state University of New
York that analyzed the difference between in in group settings
analyze the difference between self serving and group oriented gossip,
and their research showed that gossip that was sort of
meant for group purposes was more beneficial than self serving gossip.
(14:42):
So if you're just trashing someone for the sake of
trashing someone, like when I go to the bath when
I write Kristen can't read on the bathroom wall, that's
that's not helping it. It's not gonna help anybody, and
it's gonna make me cry a little bit too. But
if I wasn't gossiping just to trash Kristen, and I
was like, guys, I don't think I think we get
more work done. If we could help Kristin learn how
to read, then maybe our productivity would go up exactly
(15:05):
And um, that would be a weird way to accomplish
more productivity. Yeah it would be, But at least i'd
learned to read. That'd be good. And there was another
recent study from Indian University that looked at gossip in
the workplace and also once again found that there are
some benefits to it as well. Right now, this is
if let's say you're in a staff meeting and all
(15:25):
of a sudden, you know, you're talking about blah blah blah,
and they start talk about like other departments and other people,
and maybe you're feeling a little uncomfortable because you don't
know if this is a good thing or a bad thing.
And basically the university just found that sometimes it is
a good thing, sometimes it is a bad thing. Like
let's take the example of Christin reading again, um, because
I love it and I'm really hoping it catches on.
(15:45):
If if our boss were to say Kristen can't read
and so she never gets anything done on time, then yeah,
everyone's gonna learn that Kristen is illiterate. If the boss says, guys,
I'm so proud of Kristin. She can't read yet, but
he's trying really hard to make her letters, then we
would learn that you're a good person and you're trying,
so you'd be redirecting that negative gossip and it's effort.
(16:09):
It's just you can get a read on how people
feel about you, and it can enhance your reputation. Whereas
if I got into that meeting and thought, so sick
of Kristin not being able to read, I have to
do all the podcast research on my own. And then
if I heard someone say Kristen is trying really hard
to learn how to read, then that can enhance your
reputation because I wouldn't be as frustrated with you and
I have to draw all my pictures. Yeah, Tim Hallett,
(16:29):
who conducted this study at I you said, if you're
interested in learning how an organization works, you can look
at the org chart. But people often say, I still
can't tell how things get done and who the prime
movers are. But if you're attentive and you can see
who has the informal status, who's being gossiped about. Because
if I'm if I can't read, but I'm still being discussed,
(16:52):
you're important, then I'm important in some way. I mean,
obviously I'm important. I mean you've gotten fired. If they
didn't need you. So the fact that you're here to
be gossip about out, Yeah, they're saying that's a win.
So that's the fine line this and this all goes
back to to our old podcast about office politics, because
when you say that gossip is a big part of
office politics, because you want to be the person who
someone can come to with really good gossip, but you
(17:14):
don't want to be known as the gossip, right, the
fine line of office gossip. And I don't think that
you always want to be featured in the office gossip.
But if you're never featuring the office gossip, that's the problem.
You're not doing enough. So you want to be talked
about a little bit. So I mean, it's probably not
earth shuttering to everyone, but it's it is a fine
line to walk, Like, do I need to pretend that
(17:36):
I can't read so that people will talk about me more?
I don't know, Molly, that might not be the way
to go. Why am I so hung up on this
illiteracy rumor? I don't know, but I'm gonna squash it
right now. People, I can read. I'm reading right now.
Read a sentence right now? Okay, Well, uh yeah, going
back to our original question of doom, men and women
gossip differently. I think we have realized that, yes, we
(17:58):
do gossip differently. And um, Maxim dot com is wrong
about the fact they say that men don't gossip. They
say that men don't care enough about other people's personal
lives to gossip about them. I am shocked that Maxim
dot com is wrong. And Maxim, look at the research
you guys gossip you just don't call it gossip, but
not that gossip is bad. That's the other thing, you know.
(18:19):
I think gossip. I think God, I need to give
that up for lunch or something. Yeah, but no, I
would just you know what, I would like to bring
back the term god sip. I'm a god. Sup. We'll
see if that works. Yeah, all right, Kristen, let's prove
that we can read by reading some listener mails. All right,
(18:40):
So our first listener mail is from Kathleen. It's about
our podcast. Um do opposites attract? And Um? She writes,
I think your conclusion was pretty correct that we tend
to be attracted to people that are similar to ourselves. However,
my husband and I saw have many opposite traits. I'm
very common he tends to worry about everything. He can
talk for hours and I don't always have something to say, cetera.
(19:00):
But the main reason I felt I need to write
in because Kristen's comments about odors. When I first met
my husband, I loved his smell. When I would arrive
at his house, I could smell him in the air,
and I love smelling his sweatshirts. Okay, that sounds very strange,
and I get the image of dogs sniffing each other here.
I don't know if it was just a soap or
just his natural body owner that I love so much,
and I've either gotten used to smelling it all the
time or its odors change because I don't smell it anymore.
(19:23):
It definitely wasn't a dirty smell, but an earthy one,
and sometimes I can still imagine that wonderful smell. We've
been together for twelve years now, and though I don't
still smell like I did in the beginning, we're still
very happy. And I have to say, every email that
comes in about people sniffing their significant other is just
a great email to read. It is good at a
lot of the people sniff each other. Keep them coming. Um, Well,
(19:43):
I've got an email here from Eric about our Disney
Princesses podcast. He said, I found it interesting that as
I listened to the trials and tribulations that princess worship
could create and mirrored the life of boys too. Molly
mentioned girls being stressed to be beautiful and perfect and
saved the prince, but fall us in the water. But
boys are expected to slay dragons, save the day, and
(20:03):
do the impossible all the time, not to mention the
real social pressure always to always man up and be
a man. I see the princess movies as an opportunity
to talk to my kids. Their friends watch them, and
so my kids wanted to watch them, so I watched
them too. So now I say things like, maybe you're
more like Mulan and you have to pave your own
path in life. Or look at how big a mistake
(20:24):
Aerial made. We can fix it. Thanks for the great work,
keep it up and thank you Eric. So, guys, if
you have any any good gossip um and once again,
I don't drink at work and I can read and
just underscore that, uh, send it our way. Our email
is mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com. During
(20:45):
the week, you can check out all of our juicy
gossip on our gossip blog how to Stuff. Not actually
gossip blog, but sometimes there's gossip on there. If you
read between the uh so yeah check it out, you'll
definitely go now huh how to Stuff. And you can
also read how Gossip Works by Tracy V. Wilson at
how stuff works dot com for more on this and
(21:10):
thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on
the how stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
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