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Gossip is Prevalent in Spontaneous Human Communication

Author(s): Károly Takács

Thursday 15  |   10:40-11:00

Room: TP55

Session: Sociality in the Digital Age: Interactions, Emotions, Lifestyles, and Norms

Gossip seems to be a core and universal element of human social interactions and is essential for the development of reputations and informal social order. According to an influential hypothesis, gossip has developed as an advanced form of social grooming and primarily serves social bonding between the sender and the receiver. Accordingly, gossip could be idle talk that constitutes up to two thirds of informal speaking time. We examined this hypothesis in a 550- hour corpus of spontaneous unfiltered informal conversations in a closed environment using manual gossip annotations. We found that only 37.2% of all conversation segments contained within-context gossip. Gossip segments, however, were 2.6 times longer than segments without gossip, resulting that 59.3% of all speaking time spent in conversations containing within-context gossip. At any point of a discussion, if gossip has been initiated, it significantly extended the length of the conversation. Excitement during gossip is indicated also by more turn-takings and a higher speed of speech in gossip segments.