Michelle Tennant knows how painful it is to be the subject of unwarranted gossip.
Several years ago, she learned that a close friend had been speaking negatively about her behind her back. When she confronted him, she discovered something unexpected: She reminded him of his ex-wife. It didn’t excuse the behavior, but it helped explain it.
“One of the main reasons people spread harmful gossip is due to unresolved issues in their own lives,” Tennant, who holds a master’s degree in human development, said. “Hurt people hurt people.”
Yet, gossip doesn’t have to hurt people—it depends on how it is used.
One of five leading experts in human behavior who spoke with The Epoch Times, Tennant said gossip isn’t inherently bad. Used wisely, it can protect, inform, or connect people; used carelessly, it can damage relationships and even affect physical health.
Why We Gossip
“Human beings are anthropologically hardwired to gossip,” Shawne Duperon, one of only 100 gossip researchers in the world, told The Epoch Times. “We cannot not gossip.”
Duperon, who holds a doctorate in communication and media studies from Wayne State University, launched Project Forgive, a nonprofit leadership foundation that was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016.
Most researchers define gossip as talking about someone who isn’t present and sharing information not widely known. Under that definition, a large percentage of everyday conversation qualifies, and most of it is benign.
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that most everyday gossip is neutral rather than malicious. Briefly mentioning a colleague’s promotion is neutral; unfoundedly attributing that same promotion to dishonest behavior is not.
Gossip can be positive. An example might be when a colleague is out sick, and coworkers converse about how bad they feel for the ill staff member, offering to pitch in and help carry the workload.
“Gossip isn’t trivial,” Duperon said. “And is, in fact, one of the primary ways humans make sense of the world.”
Roy Baumeister, who holds a doctorate in psychology from Princeton University and has served as a past president of the International Positive Psychology Association, told The Epoch Times that humans are inherently social. In that sense, gossip helps enforce cooperation.
Eshin Jolly, who has a doctorate in psychology and is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of California, San Diego, agrees. He and his colleagues have been studying gossip and published a research paper on their findings in 2021. Their work suggests that gossip is a tool serving multiple functions—bonding, shared experiences, and helping people adjust their behavior.
“The way gossip fosters social connection capitalizes on the connected feeling we experience from a shared worldview with another person,” he told The Epoch Times.
While prosocial gossip can strengthen connections, negative gossip can damage not only reputations and relationships but also our physical health.
When Gossip Turns Harmful
Anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of mean-spirited gossip knows it hurts. Research shows that the brain processes social rejection in the same neural pathways as physical pain.
When someone’s reputation is threatened, or they feel excluded, the body can shift into a “fight-or-flight” mode, releasing stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Over time, repeated social stress takes a toll, contributing to anxiety, depression, headaches, and digestive issues.
Hurtful gossip can also backfire on the person spreading it. What feels satisfying in the moment often later leads to guilt, second-guessing, or regret, earning it a comparison to junk food: gratifying briefly, corrosive over time.
Younger people may be especially vulnerable to the effects of harmful gossip. While adults might rationalize that destructive gossipers struggle with self-esteem issues, teenagers cannot rationalize as well because their prefrontal cortex, responsible for complex cognitive processes such as planning and controlling behavior, doesn’t fully develop until their mid-twenties.
“Gossip is often prevalent when not everyone can see or know the same thing,” Jolly said. “For many people, this happens during their teenage years, where social information acts like currency that separates different groups and hierarchies.”
How Technology Changed the Game
Gossip has always been powerful. Digital media made it faster, wider, and harder to contain.
Pamela Rutledge holds a doctorate in psychology and is the director of the Media Psychology Research Center. A frequent commentator on technology, pop culture, and social media behavior, she told The Epoch Times that the architecture of social platforms is specifically designed to amplify the worst tendencies of gossip. Algorithmic feeds reward novelty and emotional charge. “And gossip delivers a quick hit.”
Part of what makes gossip so compelling—online or off—is neurological. It triggers the brain’s reward system, releasing dopamine—the neurotransmitter linked to pleasure—and oxytocin, which fosters social bonding. However, digital gossip flattens nuance in ways real-world conversation rarely does.
“Gossip on social media is being reduced to digestible, simple narratives with clear winners, losers, heroes, and villains,” Rutledge said. “False information spreads faster because it tends to be more novel, unusual, threatening, and, therefore, emotionally engaging.”
Reality television and influencer culture have compounded the problem by positioning viewers as privileged observers of gossip exchanges with access to information about people they feel they know intimately. Heavy exposure to conflict-driven content raises baseline expectations for conflict and drama in real life, normalizing gossip as an acceptable form of social engagement.
“Celebrity journalism and tabloids created the economic model, and podcasts and influencer culture made it more intimate, where speculation and ‘tea’ [gossip] have become formats in their own right,” she said.
How to Use Gossip Wisely
Talking trash, spilling the tea, getting the scoop … there are countless ways of describing gossiping because it is so universal—and according to the gossip experts, it’s not going anywhere.
Baumeister offered a simple filter: “Often, what people say about someone gets repeated, even to that person. So before you say something, consider whether you want to risk it being relayed to the person about whom you are gossiping.”
Even more plainly, “Don’t let it come out of your mouth if you wouldn’t say it in front of the person it’s about,” Tennant said.
Before you are tempted to gossip, she advises asking yourself if what you are about to say is heavy or mean-spirited. “Does it weigh on your consciousness? If it’s positive, it generally feels light. Good gossip is energy-giving rather than energy draining.”
The distinction, in the end, that all the experts The Epoch Times spoke with agreed on, is that gossip is an ingrained, deeply human behavior, with the power to bring people together or push them apart.
“Gossip isn’t the issue. It’s how we use it,” Duperon said.