Who doesn’t love gossiping? Gossiping can actually lower stress, stop the exploitation of others, and monitor others’ bad behavior, according to findings of the study back in 2012.
However, a recent study found that people engage in gossiping for 52 minutes a day on average in 16 waking hours and women don’t engage in tear-down gossip any more than men.
According to researchers from the University of California-Riverside, lower-income people don't talk rumors more than their more well-to-do counterparts and younger people are more probable to gossip negatively than their older counterparts.
"There is a surprising dearth of information about who gossips and how given public interest and opinion on the subject," said Megan Robbins, an assistant psychology professor who led the study.
"Everyone gossips and gossip is ubiquitous," the researchers noted in the paper published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
The findings further showed that extroverts gossip more often than introverts while women gossip more than men but only in neutral, information-sharing gossip.
The researchers Robbins and Alexander Karan, a graduate student in her lab, looked at data from 467 people aged between 18 to 58 years old - 198 men and 269 women - who took part in one of five studies.
Participants wore a portable listening device. The findings showed that about 14 percent of participants' conversations were gossip, for just under an hour in 16 waking hours. Three-fourths of gossip was almost neutral, and negative gossip (604 instances) was twice as prevalent as positive (376).
"Gossip overwhelmingly was about an acquaintance and not a celebrity, with a comparison of 3,292 samples vs. 369," the study said. Poorer, less educated people don't gossip more than wealthier, better-educated ones.
"It would be hard to think of a person who never gossips because that would mean the only time they mention someone is in their presence," Robbins said. "They could never talk about a celebrity unless the celebrity was present for the conversation; they would only mention any detail about anyone else if they are present," he added.
By Sowmya Sangam
