The Secret Social Superpower: Why Gossip Is Essential to Human Bonding

Gossip, often maligned as a petty or malicious pastime, holds a profound and enduring fascination for people due to its deep-seated evolutionary roots in human sociality. Anthropologists, such as Robin Dunbar, suggest that language itself may have evolved primarily to facilitate the exchange of social information—gossip—as a form of "vocal grooming." As human groups grew larger than the small, intimate circles where physical grooming could maintain bonds, a more efficient way was needed to manage complex social networks, and that mechanism was talk about other people. Therefore, our innate wiring predisposes us to seek out and engage with social chatter.