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Our first knee-jerk reaction frowns on gossip, but science supports its remarkable social purposes.

Gossip, our most on-hand "news source," keeps us up to date on pertinent local, social activity.

Our tongues wag quickest and most purposefully when our significant others are the "headlines."

Gossip’s muddied reputation is deeply sunk in disrepute, but once “rinsed off," its brighter side shines.

Despite its commonplace, everyday usage, the majority of us disavow gossip. We frown upon it disapprovingly, even scornfully for its customary meanings. Gossip remains putatively up to its neck in mud, mired in pejorative connotations and a social repugnancy it never sheds. But our conventional anti-gossip sentiments fly in the face of scientific findings.

Across the social science spectrum, researchers cast gossip largely in a prosocial role because it serves vital and far-reaching functions like, human bonding, the regulation and reinforcement of social codes and mores, the deterrence of unacceptable, antisocial behavior and the navigation of interpersonal intricacies and complexities. Moreover, gossip is decidedly “our most local news source,“ keeping us informed and fueled with critical hearsay about activities occurring in our immediate social network.

By scientific reckoning, the upside of gossip far outweighs its downside, once cleansed of its ill-repute.

A Conversational Mainstay

Defined colloquially, gossip is talk about those not present. Subtract up to 80% of the content of our day-to-day conversations and the remaining 20% is gossip-free, according to research. Statistically, gossip sucks up most of the conversational oxygen by promoting an active exchange of compelling, much-needed social........

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