Gossip

Less directly linked to forensic psychology but with a little mental gymnastics we will eventually get there too.

People gossip and we can't escape that. Sometimes we don't know, sometimes we do and when we do, it is perhaps something that we might decide to manage in some way, although it is not easy when the speed of rumour is the only thing faster than the speed of light. Celerity is not the mother of good fortune.

Why do people gossip? If you wanted to take a harsh route to understand it, it might be that you conclude that their own lives are so dull and empty that they have to experience something by talking about, surmising about, others' lives. You might decide that it is an attempt to lower your status as you are considered some kind of threat to some people and you are such a threat and they want your power (although research suggests that people who gossip are regarded as less powerful - the irony is delightful) and that you have a special place in those people's brains that you occupy. As anyone with a passing interest in forensic psychology and profiling will know, it is rare that we can determine another's motivation (or our own) and that motivation for a behaviour might not define that behaviour as many roads lead to the same destination. 

It might be idle cruelty and demonstrate a certain level of stupidity (those who gossip don't know that their gossiping might be gossiped about or that their gossip-coven don't inhabit other covens?) or an expression of state unhappiness, boredom, poor imagination, limited social outlets, a need to form an in-group founded on the worst kind of connection, that of the undermining of others (so not a mile away from racism, sexism, homophobia). It's unlikely to be a celebration of life, or joy, or happiness, or respect, or love, or kindness. There is likely a special place in purgatory (as rumour is that is painfully dull) where gossips end up.

Who knows what it is about but, my opinion is that it doesn't come from a good place.

A psychological model of gossip from 2000 (Kurland & Pelled) suggests that negative gossip is about developing coercive power

which nowadays we would link to coercive control, and coercive control is a criminal offence in England and Wales (Section 76 of the Serious Crime Act, 2015) with a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment and it does include "reputational damage".

Does it matter? Probably not, mostly, because it is so mundane and repetitive - there is little evidence of creativity in gossip. Man spends time with women, "they must be fucking", woman spends time with man, "they must be fucking", man suggests woman doesn't need to be at an event that she really doesn't need to be at, so could do something she wants or needs to do, "man is undermining woman", woman disagrees with woman, "woman is undermining woman". There is nothing inspired or clever or funny about any of it. Where it perhaps shows something, which I am not sure is any more positive, is where there is a degree of investigation to support the conjecture. A person says X and the gossiping goes into overdrive to question the veracity of X as a way to prove that the gossip-content (let's call that Y) must be true. So then we conclude that gossips are poor scientists, the truth or otherwise of X doesn't not necessarily support Y. That a woman did, or didn't, go to dinner in a certain location doesn't have much bearing on whether said woman is fucking a certain man. Gossiping relies on the absence of information to fill the gaps, to make connection, to build conclusions, it is founded on the misrepresentation of time and people and places and intentions, it infuses the people who are being gossiped about with those motivations and beliefs and desires and concerns, the basic elements of personality and morality, of those who are gossiping. Gossiping about me doesn't tell anything about me really, what it does do is suggest that if the gossiper was the puppet-master of my choices and fate, I would behave that way. If the gossip concludes that I would kick a puppy what we really learn is that the gossip would kick a puppy. It is the disappointed being disappointing.

I can't prove that. It probably is testable but with all candour, I would rather have my own life, its highs and lows, excitements and boredoms, errors and failures and successes than find out. I'd rather spend time with my friends and talk to them. Or fuck with someone.

It can be important and it can be harmful. The unthinking and ill-informed pronouncements of unkind gossip will make connections where there are none or suggest intention that is actually missing. If others hear those as statements of fact they might be believed as fact and, taken out of context, can redefine how a person is thought of.

Man spends time with woman "they must be fucking" is overheard or presented as irrevocably true, with unassailable logic, and is taken as fact. The issue is, that woman is married. So now that woman may be recast as what, as unfaithful, as a cheat (with the ramifications that can bring with it) and that spreads and behind her back people talk and make other links, none of them true, and eventually her husband hears whispers and he might not challenge her, but his behaviour might change, or he might challenge her and not believe her response? These half-truths have consequences. 

That the gossips don't see that in their own lives they have "man spends time with them" and that they don't see that their conclusions are not even based on their own experiences of spending time with that same man (the reality is "they didn't fuck"). How does that even happen? Oh, well, because gossips have more sense, strength of character, morals, principles, they are not the tawdry unwashed little people who are so predictable and simplistic. With all that sense and strength of character, those morals and principles, you might think they realise that their idle chit-chat is potentially damaging, sometimes to people they might claim as friends, people that they would say they would care about. But you don't do you? It's just a pleasure in the nasty.

Here is where you might find a forensic application. Be careful what you say when talking about clients, be careful what you say when talking to clients as intentionally or otherwise your words tell a story about you and they may imply a story about other people, and people use those stories to make decisions and judgements and plans and if you do not control what you say when and to whom your lack of control adds chaos into the minds and lives of others where there need not be chaos or need not be more chaos. We are working with people who make poor choices so why increase the chances of poor choices? You cannot know what will impact a person but you can choose what they get from you. Words are powerful. That's why songs make you cry and why you can be motivated by speeches.

Should we think of it, in some cases, as akin to revenge pornography? It sort of is already as it likely could fall under the definition of defamation, "Defamation, at a first approximation, is any form of communication that can injure a third party's reputation. This can include all modes of human-understandable communications: gestures, images, signs, words." 

In the UK the five elements of defamation are;

• A false statement of fact was made.
• The statement was communicated to a third party.
• The defendant was negligent or acted with absolute malice in determining the truth of the statement.
• The statement was not privileged.
• The statement caused some type of damage.

Would this all apply to gossip? I don't know, but if I get the chance to ask a legal professional I'd like to find out.

But you'd have to care enough about what's said and the people who say it to bother. My own opinion is that the greatest revenge is that (i) you occupy space in someone else's head and (ii) you know that they're not friends and (iii) you know that they are not to be trusted, and knowing who your friends are is one of the best feelings and I don't think gossips know who their friends are. Come on, who can you trust?