Gossip and Human Behavior

By Dolly | Jun 5, 2008
Posted in: Psychology


Human behavior often changes when someone hears others gossiping about them, which usually results in enragement. In contrast, when they gossip about someone else it makes them feel more comfortable because it only hides their own imperfections.

Mostly, gossip is used to entertain one’s thoughts or to release one’s own tensions by talking about others. For instance, two good friends of Monica still don’t know the reason for her breakup. They may try to reason with one another to find a clue and talk about the relationship between Monica and her boyfriend Jason. This leads to “juicy” gossip.

Another example is two church members, one rich and the other middle class. The middle class parishioner talks about the rich member, “he is such a show off, how does he make all that money” and so on. The middle class member wants to be at his level, so his emotional response is finding something negative or making up gossip.

Furthermore, gossiping only results in a habit where an individual can’t help but find something to gossip and it can be about anyone. The individual may become fixated and even come up with far-fetched situations to validate his/her gossip stories.

Consequently, it is human nature to find fault in others and it’s mostly done to hide away our own flaws.

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