We Gossip About 52 Minutes A Day. That May Not Be As Toxic As It Sounds
Gossip has a bad rap. Sure, it can be catty and mean, but research is turning up ways it helps groups build cohesion — and can nudge some individuals to make positive changes in their lives.
Almost everyone gossips.
And a new study finds that people spend about 52 minutes per day, on average, talking to someone about someone else who is not present.
But here's the surprise: Despite the assumption that most gossip is trash talk, the study finds that the vast majority of gossip is nonjudgmental chitchat.
"We actually found that the overwhelming majority of gossip was neutral,", a psychologist at the University of California, Riverside, who studies how people's social interactions are related to their health and well-being. "About three-quarters of the conversation we heard in our sampled conversations wasneither positive nor negative," Robbins says.
