Look at the popularity of soaps like General Hospital and Days of our Lives. The characters on such shows basically exist for the sole purpose of generating artificial gossip. Fans of these shows like to immerse themselves in the convoluted details of these characters tangled love lives. They invest time and mental energy to do so in spite the absence of any social reward.

It stands to reason that if people can be titillated by the intimate details of imaginary lives, then those of real people will be more thrilling still.

Can gossip be a potent weapon in playing office politics and establishing social pecking orders? Undoubtedly it can but I would question how often this is the motive. I suspect that most gossip is not about such goals in the same way that most sex is not about having children.

Whenever I see a claim like this I think “are you sure?” A little googling digs up studies that were based on college students. College students may easily fail to be representative of the the population as a whole, especially in the area of social interaction. An example quote from one article on gossip research:

She claims that among the surprises thrown up by her research conducted on 84 Belgian undergraduate volunteers is the fact that people in relationships are just as keen to discuss potential romantic partners as single men and women.

This specific finding seems on the face of it to be much more likely to be true of undergraduates than of adults generally. Older adults tend to truthfully call their romantic partners such things as “the mother of my children” and are in much less of a position to easily shift into new relationships, as compared to undergraduates, and consequently might be less inclined to discuss potential romantic partners. Similar points can be raised more generally about the tendency to gossip.

Proverbs 11:13 A gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy man keeps a secret.

Proverbs 16:28 A perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close
friends.

Proverbs 17:9 He who covers over an offense promotes love, but whoever repeats the
matter separates close friends.

Proverbs 18:8 The words of a gossip are like choice morsels; they go down to a
man’s inmost parts.

Proverbs 20:19 A gossip betrays a confidence; so avoid a man who talks too much.

Proverbs 26:20 Without wood a fire goes out; without gossip a quarrel dies down.

! Tim 5:13 Besides, they get into the habit of being idle and going about from house to house. And not only do they become idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.

What you’re missing is that they don’t see the connection between the two, how adopting that posture is read by other people, and what implications it has for their access to other opportunities. Heck, I doubt even socially-adept people see it either. Rather, they do what comes naturally to them, what is intrinsically enjoyable to them, what they would do irrespective of these benefits, and it happens to work well for them.

Seriously, what is it with this tendency to act like socially-inept are making a deliberate, conscious trade-off in the foolish things they do, as if they somehow deserve what they get? Whatever happened to “assume stupidity before malice”?

This is also why I’m skeptical of your claim about falling in love, at least as you presented it here. Your instructions rely crucially on several assumptions about how to conduct the interaction which may not be shared by socially inept people. I can 100% guarantee that if I honestly and confidently attempted the steps you listed, I would be kicked out of the venue on the grounds that, “omg, do you know what that weirdo just started talking to me about?” And certainly, the scientific experiment filtered for more individual characteristics and had a more specific protocol than you gave.

Also, frelkins, despite your very clear, thorough justification for not “going there”, I’m going to ask again: If indeed learning how to gossip is as important as math and reading (as I’m realizing all too late in life), why isn’t there a mandatory class in school for it? Is it because they think anyone that doesn’t figure it out on their own, somehow “deserves” to be limited? Would they ever propose doing that to people who don’t learn math on their own?

If there’s a better explanation, I don’t know what it is. I have always been willing to help others along in science, math, and technical areas, but not once has anyone ever pulled me aside to help me in terms of social skills. Rather, my experience seems to be that the reaction is to spread horrible rumors about me and expel me from the group on a flimsy pretense and not even tell me about the rumors or make even a token effort to identify the social deficiencies that would in any way benefit me.

Re: frelkins’s gossip examples, I know that workplaces can get in big trouble for organizing these after hours events that affect employment but do it in a way that isn’t open to everyone. If this is still common, that tells me that:

a) The whole pretense of prohibiting it is just another way to make them harder to learn about these events, and
b) it’s an example of discrimination. Imagine if you only invited white people. (And there are cases like this that didn’t go well for the employer.) And please don’t work up an elaborate reason why it’s not really discrimination because there’s a valid reason to exclude socially inept people. We all know how well it would go over if you tried the excuse of, “Whoa whoa whoa, I’m not discriminating against black people. It’s just that having blacks work for me would make the clients/customers uneasy…”

Btw, I agre that it’s possible to learn social intelligence … just not from any instructor that has society’s endorsement for what he does.

This puts me off some forms of gossip and gossipers immediately. I’m not going to trust someone who despises people at the drop of a hat! Because they might decide to dislike me for whatever reason, so I don’t want to trust them. People who work/live together should default cooperate with each other, it just makes life easier and for a nicer environment.

On the other hand I really enjoy talking to people about their plans, their hopes and dreams. Even if they are not my particular interests or important in the greater scheme of things.

Robin,
Does recounting your personal history as an academic mean that you did not have the same experience in your previous career? Was it a nerdy environment where people didn’t gossip?