Scientists have found that men gossip no less than women
A group of researchers from the University of California at Riverside have debunked the myth that only women gossip. A series of experiments showed that men tend to gossip no less than the fair sex. Also, psychologists and sociologists have debunked another widespread misconception, saying that older people gossip more and more readily than younger ones.
The results of the study were published in the Russian edition of Science and Life.
The experiment involved several hundred men and women of all different ages - from 18 to 58 years. Each subject was asked to attach a recording device to their clothes. It selectively fixed not everything that a person said, but only individual fragments of his conversations. When the device turns on, the subjects did not know. According to the rules, they wore it for several days, taking it off only while sleeping.
The resulting audio files were analyzed by psychologists and a special neural network program, which had the function of searching for information from the mouth of the speaker about other people. So managed to count who and how much gossiped during the experiment.
It turned out that people of any age did not like to gossip too much - only about 14% of the dialogues had signs of gossip.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, gossip was completely neutral in nature — not condemned, not blamed. In about 10% of cases, these dialogues were negative, and only in 5% of cases, they were positive (they were good to people for their eyes).
The personal life of famous people interest our contemporaries more often than the personal life of a neighbor or fellow worker. Gossip about the stars are found 9 times more often.
The researchers did not find any age differences: both 18-year-old and 55-year-old participants of the experiment gossiped with the same intensity and frequency. There were no differences in the level of education, financial condition either - the rich and the educated gossip exactly the same amount as the poor and under-educated.
But now women have something to argue when men accuse them of being addicted to gossip - researchers found no gender differences. Equally gossip and those and others. But men more often than women speak about someone behind the eyes impartially and negatively. Women's gossip is more positive or neutral.
