According to a new study, gossiping isn’t just fun, it performs an important biological function: It teaches us to think twice before befriending Paris Hilton or Mel Gibson.
Northeastern University researchers found chattering about the personal lives of others helps us predict who may be a risk to us. USA Today reports that this was determined by two experiments on the visual phenomenon called “binocular rivalry.” This involves showing each eye a different image at the same time. Instead of appearing superimposed, the eye alternates between the two images. For the first experiment, people were shown bland faces and given a description of the person’s actions that was either negative, positive or neutral. These ranged rom “helped and elderly woman with groceries,” to “threw a chair at a classmate.” In the second experiment, subjects were shown faces mixed in with neutral images, in this case a house. They held down a key on a keyboard whenever they consciously saw a face.