Inside the Mind Of A Shameless Gossip (It’s Not All Bad News)
You’re driving home from a dinner party with your bestie in the passenger seat. You’ve already covered the basics: the food was delicious (of course, it was!), the house was beautiful (you knew it would be), the music was on point (who doesn’t love Taylor Swift?). There’s a moment, and you both pause. You take a left turn. It’s your friend who breaks the silence.
“Did you notice anything weird about Sasha?”
It’s the cue you’ve been waiting for. You jump in; there was something off about Sasha. She barely said a word all evening, spent the whole time texting, and left before dessert hit the table. It all comes tumbling out, and just like that you’re gossiping the rest of the journey away, theorizing about what could be up with her and whether she was secretly mad at the host.
It feels cathartic at first, before the guilt sets in. But is gossip really as toxic as we make it out to be, or is there a side to it we’re seriously overlooking?
What is Gossip?
You already know the answer. Gossip is talking about someone when they’re not there. It often involves evaluating them or their behavior, passing judgment on what they didn’t or didn’t do. A gossip might whisper about a coworker who messed up on a project, or gripe about a mutual friend’s rudeness.
But gossip doesn’t always have to be negative—you can talk positively about people and still be officially gossiping. Rachel DeAlto, communications expert, Certified Speaking Professional and author of Relatable: How to Connect with Anyone Anywhere, explains, “The word 'gossip' tends to carry a negative connotation. Yet the same label can apply when people share good news, celebrate someone's success or pass along social updates.”
When you consider that gossip is a natural, almost constant part of human communication, this makes sense. Research has found that people spend nearly an hour talking about other people every single day. The majority of that talk isn’t negative—the study found it’s usually neutral, just harmless chatter.
Which begs the question, if most gossip is benign, why do we bother? The answer, it turns out, goes back further than you might expect.
Why We Gossip, Evolutionarily Speaking
Some experts believe that gossip dates back to Mesopotamia, the ‘cradle of civilization,’ more than 5,000 years ago. The theory goes that it was key to how groups bond and preserve their communities. Everyone has to play their role for a society to function well. By sharing information about others, groups could avoid being exploited by the selfish and the lazy.
Fundamentally, gossip allowed communities to police their members. If someone was mean-spirited or not pulling their weight, the rest of the group would talk about it and likely take action. It’s not malicious in the sense of singling out people. Instead, it’s about making sure the community survives.
“To understand why humans gossip, you have to look at our evolutionary biology. We are herd animals,” explains Joel Blackstock, LCSW, Clinical Director of Taproot Therapy Collective. “Our nervous systems are strictly wired to survive by staying in the group. In early human history, gossip evolved as our primary neurobiological threat-assessment tool. We needed to know who in the tribe was safe, who was hoarding resources, and who was a threat. Gossip fulfills the deepest psychological need a mammal has: predictable safety within the herd."
How Gossip Builds Social Bonds
You’d hope human civilization has moved on in those thousands of years, and we have other ways of keeping people in line than whispering about them behind their back. So, why does almost everyone still do it?
The answer lies in the positive side of gossiping—its ability to help us build lasting social bonds, especially when we notice something out of the ordinary.
One study illustrates this perfectly. Researchers from the University of Queensland paired up strangers and showed them videos of campus life. In some videos, a person dropped litter on the floor, while in others they picked it up. The researchers then allowed the pairs to talk it out. Those who witnessed the littering reported a stronger grasp of social norms and a greater desire to gossip. When they gossiped, it strengthened their relationship with the other person. Seeing someone deviate from agreed social norms brought them together in ways the “good” behavior simply didn’t.
“Co-regulating around a shared boundary is exactly how human beings bond,” explains Blackstock. “If you and a coworker both quietly agree that your manager's behavior is out of line, your nervous systems are actually syncing up. You are using gossip to establish a shared social norm. It signals to the brain that you both have the exact same definition of danger, and therefore, you are safe with each other."
The moment you gossip, you’ve effectively started a new social circle. The shared information creates two distinct groups: them (the subject of the gossip) and us (the gossipers). It puts you and whoever you’re gossiping with in a position of power and, perhaps most importantly, trust.
“Sharing inside information can create a sense of closeness between people,” DeAlto says. “When someone confides in you or includes you in a conversation others may not have access to, it can feel like a bonding moment. Psychologically, it signals inclusion and mutual trust, even if the topic itself is fairly minor.”
The power of gossip doesn’t only extend to platonic and workplace relationships. Sitting down with your partner to put the world to rights can be a wholly positive experience. A 2025 study found that romantic partners who gossiped were happier and enjoyed a higher quality relationship. The research found that even negative gossip about mutual acquaintances strengthened the idea that partners were “on the same team.”
Is Gossip Ever Toxic?
Let’s pause for a reality check: you know from experience that gossiping is not all sunshine and rainbows. There’s a reason it has a bad reputation, and it’s down to the dark intentions that sometimes sit behind it. A person with low emotional intelligence (EQ), for example, might gossip carelessly, with no regard to the potential risks and consequences, and the information they share could be wholly negative. It may be a guise to hide their own insecurities.
“The way a person gossips tells you everything about their nervous system,” says Blackstock. “People with low emotional intelligence, which clinically translates to a chronically dysregulated nervous system, use gossip in a fundamentally different way.”
He explains that, while regulated people and those with high EQ use gossip as a way to share social data, “someone with low EQ uses gossip as a maladaptive way to offload their own internal anxiety. Because they don't know how to internally self-soothe, they tear others down to artificially inflate their own status and force a temporary, false sense of connection with the listener.”
Hurt people hurt people
You’ve likely heard the phrase ‘hurt people hurt people’. Well, that’s precisely what happens when someone with low EQ uses gossip to make themselves feel better. Rather than looking for healthy ways to deal with difficult emotions, they lash out. They often choose a target who they perceive as weaker, and frequently gossip about them. This can swiftly turn into something more deliberate, such as an ongoing campaign that isolates and excludes a single person.
“For the person being persistently gossiped about, the mental health impact is catastrophic,” says Blackstock. “The human brain processes social rejection and exile using the exact same neural pathways as literal, physical pain. If you are the target of a whisper campaign, your amygdala registers that you are being pushed out of the herd.” This type of gossip benefits no one, not the group and least of all the person on the receiving end.
It’s also important to consider the reason someone is gossiping. When it’s rooted in concern for the person or the wider group, it’s unlikely to be toxic—the goal of this type of gossip is to protect. But if it’s about persecuting one person, it can be the sign of something far more malicious. This is where gossiping bleeds into bullying behavior.
“Gossip tends to become harmful when the intention shifts from sharing information to damaging someone's reputation or excluding them,” says DeAlto. “When the goal is to demean, isolate or repeatedly undermine someone, the behaviour moves away from social bonding and toward something that can have real psychological consequences.”
What Does “Good” Gossip Look Like?
We’ve talked about the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of gossip. So, how can you keep it positive and non-toxic? There are a few ways you can check-in with yourself.
You’re aware you’re doing it
Is gossiping a conscious choice, or just something you fall back on? If you’re aware you’re doing it, you can control the type of gossip you are. As DeAlto puts it, “once someone becomes more conscious of how and why they engage in gossip, they can begin to shift those patterns and choose more constructive ways to communicate.”
It’s pro-social, not just cruel
Blackstock says that healthy gossip is inherently ‘pro-social’—“It is friends quietly checking in with each other because they noticed a peer exhibiting erratic behavior. In its healthiest form, gossip acts as the community's biological immune system; identifying a real threat and quietly sharing that information to protect the vulnerable.”
You’re not trying to hurt someone
If you’re not sure where you sit on the gossip scale, ask yourself one simple question: What is the driving force behind your gossip? If it’s something you just had to share, for the greater good, and you keep it on a “need to know” basis, it’s likely not coming from a bad place. You can use it as a way to build bonds and get closer to others. However, if you’re setting out to intentionally hurt someone else, that’s another story. You may want to rethink what’s behind the conversation.
Takeaway
Gossip dates back to ancient civilizations and it’s quite literally wired into our behavior. When it comes from a pro-social place, it can be genuinely positive. The dark side only surfaces when people have bad or self-serving intentions, or they struggle with low EQ and don’t realize the impact their words are having on the people around them. The difference, more often than not, comes down to intention. But seriously, a little harmless chatter is nothing to feel guilty about. It may, in fact, be the very thing binding your relationships.
