EVOLVED TO CHAT
From cocktail parties to family reunions, the water cooler to the
professional convention, we all enjoy the guilty pleasures of talking
about other people. But gossip is more than just idle chitchat, it's also
how we arrange our world as social animals. Nigel Nicholson, Ph.D.,
discusses the evolutionary reasons why humanity is a beehive of
communication.
WE'VE ALL SEEN BOTH SIDES OF GOSSIP. ONE SIDE is the warm feeling
you get from spending time with a friend and sharing stories about mutual
acquaintances. The other side is the stomach-churning anger, shame and
frustration you feel when you realize someone is spreading bad news about
you. We want to be on the right side of gossip, but sometimes it
illuminates while other times it just burns.
When it's good, it binds people and communities together. As anyone
who has lived in a small community knows, gossip is something that people
who share a collective identity do naturally. But rampant individualism,
the fragmentation of our lifestyle and the pervasiveness of competitive
striving can drive gossip and rumor down more poisonous channels.
If you want to gauge the health of an organization, tap into its
grapevine, taste a sample or two, and test the toxicity. Companies that
think they need to eradicate the rumor mill to clean up the culture have
got it the wrong way around. Gossip is inevitable and blameless--the
problem lies instead in its content, which reflects precisely what is
going on in people's minds.
Evolutionary psychology argues that human nature--our psychological
architecture as much as our physical form--was shaped to survive and
reproduce under a particular set of conditions. This was the existence of
clan-dwelling primates, who subsisted by foraging and hunting in a
savanna-like environment. It is only in recent biological times that we
left the world of clan-dwelling primates for the world of agriculture,
city settlements and, eventually, business organizations. We inhabit our
high-tech world with Stone Age minds because there has not been enough
time to change our psychology to match our environment.
In evolutionary psychology, several elements conspire to give
gossip pride of place. First is the physiological capability of speech.
Evolution gave us a stunning ability to vocalize by allowing the windpipe
full access to the thorax and vocal chords. The second element is
language. We have brains endowed with speech centers that allow every
growing child to perform the greatest miracle of learning in nature--the
acquisition of nearly 13,000 words by the age of six, rising to 60,000 by
adulthood. This is what psycholinguist Stephen Pinker, Ph.D., has called
"the language instinct."
Thirdly, the large and complicated brain that evolution gave us to
create language has also mastered the politics of complex social living.
British psychologist Robin Dunbar, Ph.D., discovered a direct
relationship between primate brain and clan size; we are prodigiously
equipped mentally to master the subtleties of a social network of up to
150 people.
Our mental design also includes a Machiavellian intelligence--the
ability to empathize and read signs that indicate each other's motives
and emotions. This is essential for "cheat detection," a key skill in the
human tribe.
These tools allow us to gossip. But what role is played by
over-the-fence chat in the fate and functioning of the human animal?
There are three very essential functions of gossip: networking, influence
and social alliances.
NETWORKING
As social animals we are status-conscious, and for good reason.
Navigating the social pathways of the tribe requires a good understanding
of its complexity. There is an extensive stream of research, summarized
in the work of sociologist Lee Ellis, Ph.D., and epidemiologist Richard
Wilkinson, Ph.D., showing that among humans, as in other primate species,
being of high rank confers an important array of benefits: health, wealth
and happiness.
But attaining these benefits and avoiding failure is difficult. One
reason is that social hierarchy is multidimensional. People deploy a wide
repertoire of talents to compare themselves with others. What's more,
social structure is dynamic; it changes all the time.
Various media keep us in touch not only with the fate of the
notorious and celebrated, but also with the ever-shifting ideas and
fashions that form the currency for social discourse. The media give us
material to discuss and tell us about our own location within this labile
lattice of relationships. It is no different on the local level. The
position and importance of people in your circle of influence are
constantly shifting.
INFLUENCE
The second function of gossip is influence. Even when our social
position is apparently immobile, we retain an active interest in making
sure we do not lose it. When we find an opportunity, we try to advance a
good opinion about ourselves to those who can help us.
However, it is not enough to do good; you need a reputation for
doing good for it to count in your favor. Like it or not, we all are
confronted with the task of selling ourselves and making sure other
people have a positive impression of us.
