D id you hear about Megan Robbins?

The associate professor of psychology became a media sensation after publishing a study about gossip in 2019.

“It’s still all reporters ever ask me about,” she said, laughing.

Robbins directs the Observation of Social Exchanges in Real and Virtual Environments (OBSERVE) Lab at UCR. Its researchers seek to understand how daily social interactions are related to health and well-being. The investigators mainly rely on data collected with the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) — an aptly named device that intermittently records snippets of audio while participants go about their daily lives.

In 2025, Robbins published a second gossip study, this one focusing on how it correlates with well-being in romantic relationships. (Positively, it turns out.) But there is a lot more to dig into about gossip, and with strong interest in the topic from graduate students, she is planning to pursue additional studies.

In the meantime, Robbins spoke with UCR Magazine about what she has discovered so far, and what remains a mystery, about this universal human behavior.

How did you become interested in studying gossip?

The spark was an article that one of my doctoral students — Alex Karan, who has since graduated — shared with me. It was by a financial planner and blogger who was making claims about how gossip is a habit of poor people but not rich, successful people. The snobbery of those views, not to mention the weak evidence to support them, was off the charts. So, the gossip research started as a myth-busting exercise.

What is gossip?

For our studies, we define it as talking about someone who is not present for the conversation. This is probably the broadest definition of gossip out there, but it’s one that is widely used among gossip researchers. I think most people, when they hear the word gossip, assume it means talk that’s malicious or unkind. But it’s hard to argue that there’s not positive gossip — like, someone saying to her friend, “Oh my gosh, I went to their wedding. It was stunning. It was so moving.” That’s gossip, but it’s flattering and positive. The large majority of gossip is actually neutral, our research has found; it’s sharing information about someone without judgment attached to it.

Did gossip always have a negative connotation?

I’m not much of an expert on its semantic history, but I know it didn’t start life with a negative connotation. Gossip derives from the Old English word “godsibb,” which referred to a godparent or spiritual relative. By the Middle Ages, it had extended to mean a neighbor or close friend, and by the 1600s was used to describe a woman’s female friends whom she invited to be with her during childbirth and other domestic events. It’s also around this time that the word began to mean people, especially women, who enjoyed idle conversation. The derogatory usage gained traction over the next 100 to 200 years.

Do you know what caused the change?

Initially, “gossips” were a woman’s trusted female allies. One theory is that these networks threatened the patriarchy since they fostered solidarity among women. The theory rings generally true to me, insofar as I can’t think of an example of a man being called a gossip. It’s an insult generally thrown at women.

Research shows that women tend to discuss social topics more than men. Because women are known for valuing social discussion, labeling that behavior as “gossip” is a way to derogate women. Historically and stereotypically, women were viewed as caregivers focused on relationships, while men were the providers. Framing social interest as a negative trait like “gossip” fits into those historical, gender-based power dynamics.

But as your work has shown, everyone gossips.

Right. There’s no solid evidence that women gossip more than men, at least not in the negative way that stereotypes imply. We also found that, counter to the financial planner’s assertions, low-income people and high-income people gossip in basically equal quantities. There’s no significant gossip differential between poorly educated and highly educated people, either.

And, contrary to widely held beliefs, about 75% of the gossip we collected in our study was neutral, not negative. Negative gossip accounted for about 15%, and positive gossip was less frequent, about 9%. What’s extraordinary, I think, is that the participants in our study gossiped for an average of 52 minutes a day. That’s nearly 14% of all the conversations they had.

We also found that people mainly gossiped about their acquaintances as opposed to celebrities, and they mostly talked about social information, such as someone’s relationships or life circumstances. Topics that came in a distant second and third were physical appearance and achievement, respectively. There’s still a lot more we could unpack from our data about what was being discussed and its valence.

Were there any age-related discrepancies?

Yes. We found that younger people tend to engage in more negative gossip than older adults.

Why do you think that’s the case?

As we get older, we tend to become more emotionally mature. I think it’s probably related to the fact that as you gain more life experience, you also gain a little more understanding of others. I can imagine that parenthood also has a moderating effect — that seeing the struggles of someone you love as they grow makes you realize how everyone struggles. 

What did you find in your study of gossip in romantic relationships?

In that research, Chandler Spahr, my now-graduated student, and I gauged the frequency of gossip between romantic partners — couples in committed, long-term relationships — and its association with each person’s happiness and the quality of the relationship. We found that more frequent gossip with a partner was consistently linked to a greater sense of individual happiness. More frequent gossip also correlated with higher marks for relationship quality.

Gossiping was ubiquitous between couples. Partners in only one couple of the 76 couples we studied did not gossip with each other. It may be that relationship quality is strengthened because gossip can help establish common ground, trust, and a shared understanding of other people. 

You studied same- and different-gender relationships. Did you observe any differences related to gossip?

The positive link between gossip and well-being held true regardless of whether the couple was same-gender or different-gender. But we recorded the most instances of gossip between lesbian couples, who also reported the highest average relationship quality. The heterosexual couples reported the lowest levels of individual happiness and also had the lowest average gossiping frequency.

Could wearing the EAR device used in your study make participants less likely to gossip?

Obviously, we can’t know what they’re discussing when not wearing the EAR; we don’t have a way to measure that. Typically, participants wear the device over a weekend, and, at the end of that, period they’ll complete a questionnaire about how typical the weekend was for them and how much they felt the EAR was intruding on their lives and social interactions. Based on that measure, most people say they forgot they were wearing it. It doesn’t signal to the participant when it starts and stops recording. I think that, in general, it’s hard to not be yourself after a couple of hours of wearing it; it’s pretty unobtrusive.

Why do you think people gossip?

Well, this isn’t something I’ve studied myself, but there are a number of good papers detailing theories about it. In general, I think it’s because we are social beings. We don’t exist in isolation; we have to live with one another. And to do that well, we need information. The kind of information we need to exist, or even thrive, in a social world frequently comes from discussions about someone who isn’t present.

I’m often asked why people enjoy gossiping. I think it’s a byproduct of being a social being; you are going to be more socially successful if you know more about the people around you. I just think it’s crazy that a negative connotation has developed around it. Can you imagine being dropped into a world where you’re not allowed to talk about people when they’re not there? You would only know things that happened in front of you or that you were part of.

Also, gossip helps us understand the norms of the societies we live in. We need gossip to learn everything from the values of the people around us to information about a particular person’s behavior — you know, “Look out for that guy. He’s out for himself, so if he gives you advice, take it with a grain of salt.”

Who’s going to be helpful to you? Who’s going to be friendly? That’s information frequently gleaned from gossip and you need it to make your way in the world.