Who Do We Tell and Whom Do We Tell On? Gossip as a Strategy for Status Enhancement

College students ranked the interest value of 12 different gossip scenarios; likelihood of spreading the gossip; and the people to whom they would be most likely to tell the gossip, depending on whether the gossip was about male or female professors, relatives, friends, acquaintances, strangers, or a same-sex rival or a romantic partner. Damaging, negative news about rivals and positive news about friends and lovers was especially prized and likely to be passed on. Aside from romantic partners, males and females were more interested in information about same-sex others than about opposite-sex others. Overall, men were most likely to confide in their romantic partners, but females were equally likely to share gossip with their lovers and their same-sex friends. The universally important role played by gossip in human groups has led many researchers to propose that a human propensity for gossip is an evolved psychological adaptation that enabled individuals to be socially successful in our ancestral environments (Barkow, 1989, 1992; Dunbar, 1996; McAndrew & Milenkovic, 2002; Wilson, Wilczynski, Wells, & Weiser, 2000). Most research on gossip conducted from an evolutionary perspective has emphasized the social control function played by gossip in the life of groups. Specifically, gossip can be an efficient way to remind group members of the importance of the group’s norms and values; an effective deterrent to deviance; and a tool for punishing those who transgress (Barkow, 1992; Levin & Arluke, 1987; Merry, 1984). Research is suggesting increasingly that being able to effectively deal with cheaters is probably the dominant driving force in the evolution of much of our social behavior. For example, the emotional and behavioral reactions