Gossip, you are awesome!

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We all do. Even if we convince ourselves we won’t do it: gossip. Most of the time we don’t even realize it. Just like a year ago in St. Like two professors from the University of St. Gallen. After an online class, they really commended their students for the fact that boys (also known as “little hearts”) were more interested in the material. What about women? “They’re completely lost,” one added. All of the students – and “St. Wales Tagblatt» ended. What followed: anger and a lot of gossip about it.

Gossip is a fact, and as we’ll explain here in a moment: it’s not bad at all. It’s all about that: We want to clean up the crappy image. And on the phone, they meet a man who feels just as he says: Christian Fichter, Professor of Business Psychology at Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences in Zurich. He says: “Gossip is wrongly demonized. It is indispensable for human beings.” Because: It is an innate need.

A research project by anthropologist Robert Dunbar came to the same conclusion: Two-thirds of all our conversations talk about interpersonal issues. This is what he wrote in his book “Klatsch und Tratsch” in the late nineties. He and his colleagues overheard thousands of conversations on trains, restaurants and shops in England and found that people chatted very often and very happily about people who weren’t there. His conclusion in the book: Language was created in the first place “to gossip”.

Gossip is about morality!

To everyone who’s been gossiping about the very drunk head of the rifle club or his lazy third-party co-worker this morning, you’re not a monster. On the contrary: you are social! Occupational psychologist Fichter says: “Gossip acts like social cement.” When people gossip, they exchange important informal information. A well-known scene: the work environment. In this hierarchical environment, it is almost impossible to be informal. How you need to deal with the new boss, whether your own salary is fair, whether your co-worker is really lazy – with these conversation topics you can check if you’re right and where others are. And, according to Fichter, moral principles are negotiated. For him, it is clear: “Everyone must acquire the competence to gossip.”

Of course, there are limits. If a problem is serious, you must solve it, otherwise nothing will change. And when it turns into a bully, it becomes destructive. This can destroy a community. But it rarely happens. A 2012 study by the University of Amsterdam was able to show that the urge to have a negative influence is the last reason people gossip. The more common impulse: fun!

To anyone who still hesitates: push yourself. gossip! And remember, if you run into a gossip, that person is overly social.

Source : Blick