Gossip, Grooming, and Social Groups from an Evolutionary Perspective

Everyone gossips. It is an inherent social trait of human beings, despite tending to have negative meaning to most. In fact, two thirds of conversations are devoted to social topics (Dunbar 2004). It is one of the most common uses for language, and it may even be that language evolved primarily for this purpose. Because of its prominence in human function, it is essential to learn how gossip and spending two thirds of our time talking about others was selected for evolutionarily.
In order for a trait to be passed on and integrate itself into a genetic legacy, it must give its members an advantage of some kind. It is easy to see the selective advantage of claws for hunting, broader leaves for greater light absorption, or opposable thumbs for skilled tool use, but the advantages of language and gossip are less obvious. The answers to why we spend our lunch breaks chatting with Phil about his love life may lie with our primate ancestors and chimpanzee cousins.
Modern chimpanzees maintain close social groups of around 55. The group interactions are complex, and rivalries, wars, group splits, and high drama is common in the wild. Underlying the group actions of chimpanzees are the individual social actions, especially grooming. Chimpanzees spend as much as 20% of their time grooming one another. This time could be spent hunting or reproducing, but the complex social structure of primate groups demands that individual relationships be maintained through social grooming (Gazzaniga 2008).
As hominids evolved and grew bigger brains, specifically bigger neocortical size, their capacity for maintaining larger social groups also grew. But, the more members of the social group, the more people you need to groom to keep social order and the less time spent hunting and reproducing. Eventually, grooming became less selective because of the detriment to other survival needs, and this is where language began to take hold (MacLeod 2005). When maintaining relationships with 150-200 people (the maximum social group size of most humans), language becomes a much more efficient way to keep social order and still perform other survival tasks. Gazzaniga (2008) writes,

“If language began to substitute for grooming, one could “groom”, that is to say, gossip, while doing other things, such as foraging, traveling, and eating.”

The emergence of language as our method of grooming creates other problems, however. Language allows cheating or lying, as well as deception, interpretation/misinterpretation of meaning, and the need to understand others’ viewpoint. For the first time in evolutionary history, hominids have needed to “put themselves in the other’s shoes”. This may have led to modern homo sapiens’ theory of mind, the ability to ascribe mental states and other attributes to other people. It has also led to our ability to identify cheaters, deceive ourselves, and use language as a means to reproduce (flirting).

Works cited:
Dunbar, R.I.M. (2004).Gossip in evolutionary perspective. Review of General Psychology. 8(2), 100-110.
Gazzaniga, M.S. (2008). Human. New York, New York: HarperCollins.
MacLeod, M., & Graham-Rowe, D. (2005). Every primate's guide to schmoozing. New Scientist. 187, 10.