A little gossip can be healthy, but only when it’s used to help others, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley find.
When people observe miscreant behavior in others — in the case of the study, observing people cheating at a game — their heart rates go up. However, once observers were allowed to pass “gossip notes” alerting the victims they were being conned, the gossipers’ heart rates went down again, the Los Angeles Times reported Jan. 18.
This kind of “prosocial” gossip (not the stuff of tabloid magazines) makes people feel better, the study authors say.
“A central reason for engaging in gossip was to help others out — more so than just to talk trash about the selfish individual,” lead author Matthew Feinberg, Ph.D. says. “Also, the higher participants scored on being altruistic, the more likely they were to experience negative emotions after witnessing the selfish behavior, and the more likely they were to engage in the gossip.”
The study appears online in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Reader Question: Do you think some kinds of gossip are helpful?
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