PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Cognitive neuroscientists at Brown University investigated one of humanity’s favorite pastimes and discovered how people can spread gossip without the subject of that gossip finding out — at least not right away.
In a study supported by a federal grant from the National Science Foundation, the researchers found that gossiping relies on a person’s ability to perform complex computational processes each time they decide to spread information, and that most people do this instinctively.
The researchers defined gossiping as talking about third parties who are not present. They found that people tend to gossip less with those who are friends with the subject of the gossip — especially if the subject is considered popular — and gossip the most with those who are popular yet distantly connected to the subject.
Their findings were published in Nature Human Behaviour.
“We draw on two important factors when calculating who to share a morsel of gossip with: how popular the person is and how distantly connected they are to whoever the gossip is about,” said study author Oriel FeldmanHall, an associate professor of cognitive and psychological sciences at Brown University who is affiliated with the Carney Institute for Brain Science. “This winning algorithm enables us to share information widely without the subject knowing that we’re talking about them.”
The power of these computations is evident in recent social phenomena, according to study author Alice Xia, a Ph.D. student in cognitive science at Brown. While humans rely on these calculations to predict where their gossip may end up, Xia said, the technology underpinning social media platforms likely capitalizes on similar computations to maximize user engagement.
“Social media platforms use functionally similar algorithms to predict sharing behavior based on information like number of likes or follower counts, which signal a user’s influence and potential ability to amplify content across the network,” Xia said. “This is essentially how we get viral content.”
Mapping the spread of gossip
The human ability to make these calculations hinges on a mental process called cognitive mapping. In a paper published in 2024, FeldmanHall and Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Psychological Sciences (Research) Apoorva Bhandari established that humans replay memories of daily social interactions while sleeping to build a mental map of their social network. Even though people do not consciously recognize the relationship of every person in their social network to every other person, FeldmanHall said the maps they unconsciously create serve as reliable guides for whom to spread gossip to, whom not spread gossip to and how gossip will travel.