Why are so many people nosy?

The world of gossip It's not just something that sticks to the trash TV; it is deeply installed in our lives, even when we believe that we do not participate in it.

In fact, rumors and gossip are phenomena widely studied by social psychology for decades, and There have been many researchers who have proposed to analyze how they are born, how they spread and what effects have.

Of course, some people are more likely than others to be tempted to always search for pieces of personal information and spread it around; We don't all act the same. But... What is it that makes so many gossipy people exist??

A basic mechanism of socialization

There are researchers who attribute great importance to gossip, as it is at the base of our first forms of socialization.

For example, psychologist and biologist Robin Dunbar has developed a theory that places gossip at the beginning of the use of language in humans, tens of thousands of years ago. For him, gossiping was the evolution of the ritual that our ancestors followed when cleaning and deworming each other's skin. If this activity served to strengthen social ties, with the appearance of language this custom became a exchange of information in a confidential context, which served to socialize and to better understand what was happening in the tribe.

Somehow, the existence of gossip allowed the use of language to continue to develop, which allowed complex and large societies to emerge.

Thus, listening and transmitting gossip served to learn through simple narratives the social norms of a group, the status of each individual and even the opportunities: relate to certain people positive? Is there someone looking for a partner? etc

Thus, gossipy people, deep down, are fond of a style of information transmission that could have its origin in the birth of language, and for that reason It is still being used today in a context where the tribe has disappeared and the number of people from whom interesting gossip can be gleaned is much larger. high.

Eliminate uncertainty

But gossip also has its raison d'être in the social phenomena that are currently occurring, regardless of what happened a long time ago. In fact, the world of gossip is a response to a basic psychological need: remove as much uncertainty as possible, especially if it has to do with something that catches our attention and that we keep in mind relatively frequently.

Our brain is not designed to know everything, but it is more than competent when it comes to selecting information that is relevant to us and by accumulating data on that subject in concrete.

When we intuit that there are answers that escape us, we feel bad, because the information we have is insufficient and, if we consider it important, we will try to complete it to restore that cognitive balance than we had before. This is what happens, for example, with the cognitive dissonance, which appears when we realize that our mental schemes do not fit well with the new information that comes to us.

For example, someone who is a fan of a singer may react strongly to rumors that that person uses drugs if he considers that this behavior does not fit with the idea of ​​a respectable person. This can make you try to find out more about the subject to modify your ideas in the least unpleasant way possible and make this new information fit well into their cognitive schemata (for example, concluding that there is not enough evidence to consider the rumor true, or by blaming another person from the circle of friends of the singer).

Beyond the fan phenomenon

But... what happens when the gossip is about someone we don't even respect or idolize? In these cases, the uncertainty elimination mechanism continues to work, making us take an interest in the lives of people who, in a way, we would say do not interest us at all.

For example, heart programs are characterized by insisting on expose details of people's lives with which not we empathize. The trick here is that simply repeated exposure to information about a specific person makes that person more important to us, regardless of whether we like them or not.

Somehow, the brain gets used to reactivating the memories related to that public figure (or not so public), with which we will start to think in her more frequently and, therefore, it will be more relevant for us to fill in those knowledge gaps about her life when they are revealed.

Thus, even people who are not characterized by idolizing certain icons of popular culture are prone to falling into gossip, although sometimes they do not admit it.

Is it useful to gossip?

The very concept of gossip usually goes hand in hand with the idea that it is information that is not very relevant for practical purposes, and many times this is true precisely because we know of the existence of people that we only know through the media. At other times, however, gossip can be useful from the point of view of individual interest, although the kind of opportunities offered by the fact of knowing this information are frowned upon and, therefore, contribute to the fact that gossip in general does not enjoy good fame.

In short, determining whether gossip is useful or not depends on each case and the type of ethical scale from which one starts.

In conclusion

Gossip is a component of socialization that probably originated in small communities and, over the millennia, have been adapting to mass societies.

If there are so many people with a propensity to listen to rumors, it is precisely because they exist through a basic psychological principle: Capture information about topics we usually think about, either because we find it reasonable to take them into account to obtain benefits or because marketing campaigns and propaganda have led us to think a lot about certain people even if this does not mean a material benefit clear.