According to anthropologist Robin Dunbar, humans spend about 65 percent of their conversation time talking about the good and bad deeds of other humans—that is, gossiping. He argues that we devote an enormous amount of time to gossip because in humans gossip is a critical mechanism for social control—that is, for enforcing cooperation. Indeed, the prospect of having “everyone” know what you’ve done gives one a very strong incentive not to do it in the first place. What’s more, it’s not just that people can gossip. Gossip seems to happen automatically. For many people, not gossiping requires
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Most of the time, we talk about other people - gossiping is a form of social control.
