Gossiping is one of the most common yet frowned-upon social habits—but is it really as bad as we paint it out to be? According to researchers, gossip can actually be positive.
Is Gossiping a Bad Habit?
Gossiping can certainly become a negative habit, especially if done with negative intentions. If you enjoy stirring the pot or always seem to find yourself in the middle of drama, you might use gossip as a form of entertainment or validation.
“Gossip crosses that line when it is no longer about trying to understand what happened with a particular situation and instead is now about manipulating others into viewing you positively,” says Suzanne Koch Eckenrode, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist with over 25 years of clinical experience. “When one shares exaggerated information about someone else (often with the intent of embarrassing them), when one reveals private information about an individual without their consent, when one recruits additional individuals to ‘take sides’ in a given issue, or when one enjoys watching an individual be embarrassed due to gossip, all of these actions contribute to creating distrust within a relationship.”
This doesn’t mean you can’t vent to your friends about a conflict you’re enduring with another friend, nor does it mean it’s wrong to seek a third-party perspective on a relationship issue. Intention is everything.
When Gossiping Can Be a Positive Thing
According to research from the University of Maryland and Stanford University, gossip might actually benefit social circles by helping them flag potentially harmful or selfish individuals.
“When people are interested in knowing if someone is a good person to interact with, if they can get information from gossiping—assuming the information is honest—that can be a very useful thing to have,” study co-author Dana Nau, a retired professor in UMD’s Department of Computer Science and Institute for Systems Research, said in a press release.
“Gossip is an acceptable form of communication for providing social information, but social ammunition has no place in this world,” Eckenrode says. “When gossip serves as a means of making sense of other people’s behavior during social encounters, identifying behavior that may be considered undesirable (i.e., by providing insight on how you may react), or determining if your reactions were justified (i.e., assessing reality), then it may be viewed as being healthy. If the gossip provides insight into another person’s behavior without changing them into a social target, then it will likely provide an opportunity for better understanding among individuals involved.”
So…Should You Gossip?
Gossiping—even the harmful kind—is incredibly common. It’s good to practice self-awareness around your gossiping tendencies.
While we should avoid mindless or ill-intentioned gossiping, productive gossiping—or simply sharing factual information about third parties—can help in many cases. For example, let’s say a woman went on a first date with a man who, unfortunately, disrespected her boundaries and made her feel uncomfortable. Sharing this information with her circle of girlfriends can prevent them from engaging with that man in the future. In this case, “gossiping” can be positive.
On the other hand, let’s say the first date went well, and the man was vulnerable, respectful, and kind. Yet, the woman later takes to her friends’ group chat to make fun of her date, sharing private details about him after he’d confided in her. Gossiping in this manner is not only unproductive but malicious.
“Gossip is a social behavior, and its effects depend greatly upon how that gossip is used,” says Eckenrode. “Gossip receives such a poor reputation because, many times, trust has a ‘long memory.’ The listener will eventually think to themselves, ‘If they continually share everyone’s business, what are they sharing about mine?’”
A good rule of thumb? Just don’t be an a**hole.
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