Have you ever wondered how people manage to gossip without getting caught?
A new study by cognitive neuroscientists at Brown University reveals that our brains are constantly doing complex mental calculations to help us decide who to gossip to—without letting the person being gossiped about find out.
The researchers define gossip as talking about someone who isn’t present.
They found that when we choose who to share gossip with, we don’t do it randomly.
Instead, we instinctively consider two key things: how popular the person we’re gossiping to is, and how closely connected they are to the subject of the gossip.
For example, we’re less likely to gossip to someone who is close friends with the person we’re talking about. But if the listener is popular and only distantly connected to the subject, we’re more likely to spill the tea.
According to lead researcher Oriel FeldmanHall, our brains use a kind of “gossip algorithm” that helps spread information widely while avoiding getting caught.
This algorithm is surprisingly sophisticated, allowing us to predict how gossip will travel through our social network—without us being fully aware that we’re doing it.
The study also highlights that this mental trick is connected to something called “cognitive mapping.” This is the brain’s way of creating a mental map of our social world. Even while we sleep, we replay daily social interactions in our memory, helping us build an internal guide of who’s connected to whom.
That mental map helps us decide who’s safe to gossip to, and who might leak it back to the wrong person.
To test this, the researchers first introduced participants to a fictional nine-person social network. They asked them to decide who they’d share a piece of gossip with.
The results showed that people naturally used social distance and popularity to make their choices. In a second experiment, the team studied real students living in college dorms.
They mapped the students’ social networks and asked them to predict whether a certain piece of gossip would reach others in the network. Even though there were thousands of possible connections, the students were surprisingly accurate in guessing how gossip would spread.
The researchers even built a computer model showing how the brain uses small pieces of social information—like seeing Mary get coffee with James—to create a mental shortcut for understanding who talks to whom.
This research challenges the idea that gossip is just silly talk. Instead, it shows that our brains are wired to navigate social networks carefully, using smart strategies to share information while avoiding drama. In short, gossip isn’t just juicy—it’s brainy.
