You may have heard of the upcoming thriller directed by Olivia Wilde, do not worry honey, due to its promising reviews. (It will be released on September 23, but it premiered at the Venice International Film Festival [PDF] earlier this month). Or it may be on your radar because of the off-camera drama surrounding the cast and crew’s alleged feuds, slights, bad blood, and matters of the heart (including a romance between director, Wilde, and star, Harry Styles).
We are not going to repeat all the details; BuzzFeed News already did and Variety, harper’s bazaarY page six everyone has reported on the rumours. Additionally, various cast and crew members have posted their opinions on their own social media channels fueling gossip.
While you may be wondering what the truth behind these rumors is, the media frenzy around them may also have you wondering: Why do we care so much about celebrity drama? What is the psychology behind our cultural obsession with gossip? This is what two psychologists have to say.
What is gossip, exactly?
Gossip is so central to our cultural psyche that the American Psychological Association (APA) has its own definition. According to the APA Dictionary, gossip is personal conversation or communication about information that is often unsubstantiated and may (but does not have to) be scandalous in content or malicious in intent. Gossip impacts group bonds and also has big implications for the transmission and reinforcement of cultural norms, according to the APA.
“There are some people who try to classify gossip as negative or critical discussions about other people, but really, gossip is just sharing social information with each other,” he says. David Ludden, Ph.D., department chair of the psychology department at Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville. Any time he talks about people who aren’t there, it’s gossip, says Dr. Ludden.
in a study published in April 2019 in the journal Social and Psychological Sciences of Personality, the researchers set out to find out what people gossip about. They found that among a group of 467 participants, about three-quarters of the gossip people shared was neutral and rather boring, neither positive nor negative.
Stephen Benning, Ph.D.associate professor of psychology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, says gossip often refers to information being shared about other people and that those about whom the information is about would prefer it to be kept private.
Why are we so attracted to gossip?
“We’re social animals and we need to be able to know what’s going on in social settings, so gossip is very useful,” says Ludden, who studies the psychology of language and how it shapes and is shaped by our social world.
Give the example of asking co-workers how a meeting with the boss went to get a sense of the boss’s mood and decide whether or not to ask for a favor. Basically, gossip can help you go into social gatherings more prepared for what’s ahead. “I don’t have to meet someone directly to get an idea of what it’s like, because other people tell me about their encounters with them,” says Ludden.
It can also be a way to build relationships. “Sharing gossip can bring people together socially,” says Dr. Benning. “It provides a currency of private information that creates a shared sense of the community that owns that information.” So gossip is particularly attractive to people looking to connect with others.
We’re also drawn to gossip for some not-so-good reasons. “Sharing ‘juicy gossip’ (information that hurts or denigrates the person being talked about) is also a form of relational aggression, because it attacks people’s social standing and their position on social media,” says Benning. People may engage in this type of gossip as a way to raise their own social status or to be included in a social network they were previously not in.
“A lot of bad gossip is done in an attempt to make you feel better than the person you’re talking about,” says Ludden. “That is not a healthy approach to developing a sense of self-worth.”
A study published in May 2019 in the journal Frontiers in Psychology validate all of this. The researchers identified six distinct motives for gossiping, including information gathering and validation, relationship building, personal protection, social enjoyment, and negative influence. While negative influence (talking down about someone or trying to cut them down) was a clear motive for some people on certain occasions, the study found that this was actually the weakest motivation that led people to gossip. Gathering and validating information about the person being gossiped about was the strongest.
There is also some evidence to suggest that negative gossip can have a positive impact on social groups and promote cooperation (although perhaps not in the most altruistic way).
in a article published in the magazine psychological science, the researchers found that when people communicated information about each other’s reputations (the researcher’s definition of “gossip”), others tended to interact with people who portrayed themselves as cooperative and ostracized those who portrayed as selfish . As a result, those who were ostracized tended to change their behavior and act more cooperatively.
Figuring out whether you’re engaging in harmless gossip or harmful gossip is pretty easy, says Britt Frank, LCSWpsychotherapist based in Overland Park, Kansas, and author of The science of stagnation. Ask yourself how you would feel if the person you are talking to were to hear your conversation. Would you feel comfortable if others talked about you in the same way? Would sharing the information have any positive benefits for you and the listener, such as building empathy or imparting important knowledge? If you answered no to one or both questions, the gossip is probably the negative kind.
Why we love to gossip about celebrities as much (or more) than people we know
Based on these definitions, you might conclude (as psychologists have) that gossip plays a role in how we socialize with others: it helps us learn more and feel more connected to our networks, or elevate our own status above someone else’s within those networks. So what motivates us to gossip about celebrities we don’t (and probably never will) socialize with?
Just because we’ve never met these celebrities doesn’t mean we don’t have relationships with them. “What we do is create parasocial relationships, or imaginary relationships, with them,” says Ludden. You might, for example, feel close to a singer or athlete whose successes you have followed and celebrated with them, depending on the National Registry of Health Services Psychologists.
Like gossip itself, these relationships can be healthy or unhealthy depending on the circumstances. Parasocial ties can fill in the gaps in our real-world relationships, and they’re a risk-free way to feel connected to others, since someone who isn’t in a relationship with you can’t turn you down, says Ludden.
But if these relationships dominate your life, for example, if you are so interested in a certain celebrity or relationship with a celebrity that you don’t build real social relationships with the people around you, then that’s a bad thing.
Gossiping about these celebrities can be a similarly low-risk way to feel connected, since the information you’re sharing poses no risk to you or a member of your social circle. “You can feel uncomfortable and vulnerable sharing information about your own worlds,” says Frank. “Gossiping about celebrities is a safer way to interact with a date, ingratiate yourself with a group at parties, or feel part of a new team at work.”
It can also serve as a way to stress relief. “When life is overwhelming, focusing on celebrity gossip can be a way to numb our feelings of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, or stress,” says Frank. “Scrolling through celebrity gossip puts us in a dissociated state where we can take breaks from difficult feelings.”
But just like regular gossip, sometimes the motivation behind celebrity gossip is to make us feel better than everyone else. “Celebrity gossip is a surefire way to eat schadenfreude (delight in other people’s misfortune),” says Frank. “It feels a lot less embarrassing to admit that we enjoy watching the misfortunes of celebrities than it does to admit that we enjoy watching the misfortunes of family and friends.”
While talking to your friends about a celebrity’s latest breakup is probably relatively harmless, it’s possible to take things too far and do real damage to the celebrity without even knowing them.
“Using social media channels to herd celebrities who are tagged in posts during periods of intense gossip about them can cause genuine mental damage to those celebrities,” says Benning. As is the case with people in your own circles, it can be helpful to put yourself in that celebrity’s shoes (impossible as it may seem) and ask how they would feel if this kind of information and comments about you were spread. suggests.
