The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - The Pros and Cons of Gossip (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_945)

00:00:00.000 So today I wanted to spend a bit of time talking about a topic that is very much part of our repertoire.

00:00:08.600 If you remember, René Descartes, the famous French philosopher, said,

00:00:13.160 I think, therefore I am, or you could equally say, I gossip, therefore I am.

00:00:20.100 Gossip is a very alluring feature of human sociality.

00:00:27.300 And like most things, it has pros and cons.

00:00:33.260 I will maybe begin with some cons.

00:00:36.880 Well, actually, let me explain why I thought of doing this clip.

00:00:40.320 Number one, I always like to talk about, you know, applying evolutionary theory to study some human behavior.

00:00:47.920 And it turns out, and I will read a large set of passages from one of my books on gossip.

00:00:55.120 So I hope that you'll all stick around for that.

00:00:58.200 I'll be reading about four or five pages.

00:01:01.520 So that's number one.

00:01:02.800 I'll talk about the evolutionary roots of gossip.

00:01:04.500 But why did I think about doing so today?

00:01:06.260 Because I've been seeing the amount of back and forth between various key figures in the conservative movement.

00:01:17.540 You know, this one is no longer friends with this one.

00:01:19.420 This one gossips about this one. 1.00

00:01:21.880 This one says, you know, they said this, but I didn't say that.

00:01:25.380 So it's a form of, you know, hyperactive gossiping that's not only happening.

00:01:31.320 I mean, I know about some of these dynamics that are happening, you know, behind closed doors.

00:01:37.220 But I also know, of course, like you do, about some of these interactions that are happening publicly.

00:01:45.580 Look, life, as many economists know, as I've said on a million occasions, as most famously, perhaps, Thomas Sowell said,

00:01:55.680 there are no solutions.

00:01:57.280 There are only trade-offs.

00:01:58.620 Yes?

00:01:59.480 Life is about costs, benefits.

00:02:01.220 So every time that you're spending doing something, when you could have been spending your time doing something else of greater value,

00:02:10.500 in a sense, that decision that you've made, you've lost.

00:02:14.680 It's a suboptimal decision.

00:02:16.780 And so when people are spending a lot of their time that should be very much ideologically aligned, slamming each other.

00:02:26.400 Now, I don't mean to imply that there are no valid reasons for people to, once in a while, criticize each other's positions, of course, as long as it's substantive, right?

00:02:35.220 But as I explained, I think maybe it was yesterday or the day before, many of you have heard of the seven deadly sins.

00:02:43.400 And of the seven deadly sins, the one that many times people are surprised to hear that that's the supra sin, it's pride.

00:02:51.440 And it's pride in a very particular way.

00:02:54.620 In French, and I've explained this before, but it's worth repeating here for those of you who've maybe never heard me mention this.

00:03:00.120 In French, there's the recognition of positive pride and negative pride.

00:03:06.680 Positive pride might be, you know, I'm very proud of my work.

00:03:10.920 And negative pride, in the sense that it is used in the deadly sins, is being, you know, full of self-love.

00:03:18.660 In a theological sense, you're so full of self-love that, you know, you can't, there's no room to love God or to be pious and so on.

00:03:27.580 And so the idea is that all of the six other deadly sins stem from excessive self-love, pride, which is then manifested through lust and greed and envy and so on.

00:03:40.180 Well, many of the people in the conservative movement that are attacking each other, and I say this with all due respect to some of them, is really driven by a sense of misplaced pride.

00:03:56.120 You know, these people said this about me and it's not fair and therefore I'm now going to stand against this group and so on.

00:04:02.860 And that's a very, very myopic way to view things because the enemy that we share doesn't care that you create these fractures amongst the various camps, right?

00:04:18.740 And so, again, it's wasted energy.

00:04:21.640 Now, this doesn't, I don't mean to imply that there aren't cases where discussing something about people is not worthwhile.

00:04:31.000 So, for example, I recently put up a clip which has received a lot of views regarding the manner by which Donald Trump, you know, posted a tweet subsequent to Rob Reiner's murder.

00:04:44.940 Now, there I wasn't engaging in, you know, frivolous gossip.

00:04:48.860 Hey, guys, did you hear what Donald Trump did?

00:04:51.780 Rather, by the way, that's not how my brain works.

00:04:54.660 Rather, there was a general phenomenon that was worthy of discussion of which that particular exemplar would serve as a demonstration of that phenomenon.

00:05:07.700 So, think of it as a, you know, a case study in a moral philosophy course.

00:05:14.700 Should you hold your tongue when someone has passed away or are they fair game even when they've passed away because they've lived their life so dishonorably?

00:05:25.500 So, many people listened to my clip regarding Donald Trump and Rob Reiner and said, well, sorry, Professor, I disagree with you here. 0.99

00:05:34.780 Rob Reiner was an ass. 0.99

00:05:36.600 He would have certainly danced at the grave of Donald Trump. 1.00

00:05:40.460 He certainly would have been happy had he been assassinated and therefore F him.

00:05:44.860 Okay, I understand that sentiment.

00:05:46.900 And I was simply raising the fact of whether this could have been an opportunity while Donald Trump could have been, you know, dancing on the inside with joy that Rob Reiner has faced such a calamitous end to his life by his son allegedly killing him.

00:06:02.020 He could have appeared, as Machiavell explained, you know, it's not whether you're honest or not as a political leader, it's what the populace thinks you are, right?

00:06:13.400 Hence Machiavellian intelligence.

00:06:15.380 So, he could have appeared very presidential and magnanimous by simply saying, hey, a great artist, great director, and a wonderful actor from all in the family passed away.

00:06:26.440 I wish his family well.

00:06:28.220 He could have still been dancing privately.

00:06:30.880 Okay, so that was my point.

00:06:32.240 But in other words, I used the exemplar of Rob Reiner versus Donald Trump to make a general point.

00:06:39.420 This is not what's happening with a lot of the gossip you're seeing.

00:06:42.480 It's basically, it's a show of mean girls. 1.00

00:06:45.340 Hey, did you hear she broke up with her boyfriend?

00:06:47.900 This is what you're seeing.

00:06:48.900 And when you have, you know, Islam coming down at you, maybe you want to be spending less time worrying about what this one said about you and what that one said, and maybe, you know, fall into ranks so that we can combat the common enemy that we all have, whatever it might be. 0.78

00:07:07.300 Okay, now, I just want to, before I get into some of the evolutionary stuff, I wanted to mention a few other points.

00:07:17.740 So, number one, let me just go to, if any of you are religiously inclined, I went to Grok and I asked it to give me some key biblical injunctions against gossip.

00:07:29.260 And they're broken up into Old Testament prohibitions and New Testament warnings.

00:07:36.740 So, from the, I might not read all of them, let me read a few.

00:07:39.420 Leviticus 9.16, do not go about spreading slander among your people.

00:07:43.880 Do not do anything that endangers your neighbor's life.

00:07:47.080 I am the Lord.

00:07:48.740 Proverbs 11.13, a gossip betrays a confidence, but a trustworthy person keeps a secret.

00:07:55.220 Proverbs 16.28, a perverse person stirs up conflict.

00:07:59.260 Conflict and a gossip separates close friends.

00:08:02.780 Proverbs 18.8, the words of a gossip are like choice morsels.

00:08:08.080 They go down to the inmost parts.

00:08:11.300 Proverbs 20.19, a gossip betrays a confidence, so avoid anyone who talks too much.

00:08:18.200 And then one more from the Old Testament, and then I'll give a few from the New Testament.

00:08:21.740 Proverbs 26.20, without wood a fire goes out, without gossip a quarrel dies down.

00:08:28.320 And then from New Testament, Romans 1.29.30, they have become filled with every kind of wickedness.

00:08:35.580 They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters. 0.83

00:08:39.420 Corinthians 12.20, I fear that they may be discord, jealousy, slander, gossip, arrogance, and disorder.

00:08:47.500 There are some dot, dot, dot, meaning those are not verbatim quotes, but the parts that are relevant.

00:08:53.080 Ephesians 4.29, do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up.

00:09:02.580 Timothy 5.13, they get into the habit of being idle, right, idle tongues, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things they ought not to.

00:09:12.640 And then the final one, brothers and sisters, do not slander one another.

00:09:17.640 Now, I'm hardly as pure as, you know, a deontological statement that says, under no conditions should you slander anybody.

00:09:26.640 There are cases where, you know, I come after hard someone, but there's a reason.

00:09:31.820 They insulted me, so I want to retort back or so on.

00:09:34.420 But just idle gossip, frankly, is rather useless.

00:09:39.780 And again, when you're facing a common enemy that is extraordinarily more important than your petty little, you know, slights, then maybe rise above it.

00:09:50.400 Which brings me to a quote that has been attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt.

00:09:54.840 But, you know, there are different debates as to who originally came up with the, you know, the exact quote.

00:10:02.940 But the general one that's attributed to her, great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

00:10:10.620 I have quoted this before.

00:10:12.740 It's actually a beautiful thing because I have a very hard time. 0.91

00:10:17.260 I'm a very sociable and extroverted person, but I can't go to a party and engage in this bullshit little small talk. 0.94

00:10:24.800 I just want to jump right away. 0.77

00:10:26.280 I mean, I'm not saying that I want to talk the epistemological positions of Karl Popper at every party that I go to, right?

00:10:34.600 I can also talk about soccer and beautiful women.

00:10:37.340 But I don't like to just sit around with a bunch of people that are just gossiping about others. 0.99

00:10:43.780 And I hate to say it, one of the reasons why I, you know, very quickly became disillusioned going to academic conferences, most of the academics were morons. 0.97

00:10:53.500 They'd sit around the table and talk about, you know, these little slight things. 0.98

00:10:57.560 Oh, did you see he's coming from this university?

00:11:00.400 He's, it was just mean girls, but, but with people that had many titles before and after their names, whereas I'm coming there and let's talk big ideas. 0.99

00:11:10.240 So remember this quote, great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people.

00:11:17.840 Now, why are some of these people in the conservative movement engaging in, in idle gossip?

00:11:23.740 Well, I've already said that some of it comes from the supra vice of, you know, pride.

00:11:32.000 Oh, I was mentioning earlier that there are two French words that recognize that.

00:11:35.560 For those of you who speak French, in French, you recognize the positive and negative connotation of pride.

00:11:41.820 And the positive connotation is, of pride is fierté, right?

00:11:48.320 So if you say, je suis fier, that means I am proud, let's say, of my work.

00:11:54.940 The negative one is called orgueil.

00:11:58.020 Orgueil is the, it's, it's a, it's a prideful sense of self that, for example, if I'm hurt, it's my orgueil that's been hurt, my sense of pride in the negative sense of the term.

00:12:10.080 So interestingly, in English, you don't quite have a positive and negative distinction of pride, whereas in French, you do, okay?

00:12:19.980 Now, what's the other reason why many of the conservative, people in the conservative movement are doing this?

00:12:25.520 Not all of them.

00:12:26.280 Some of them are principled, and they're doing it for, you know, reasonable reasons.

00:12:31.260 But others have decided, in my view, that I get a lot more clicks, hence clickbait, if I just spend all my time gossiping like mean girls, which is terribly disappointing, because many of the people in question, and as you'll notice, I'm not naming names and so on, precisely because I don't want to.

00:12:57.220 I want to discuss the bigger issue, which is, under which conditions is it appropriate to be gossiping versus not?

00:13:05.780 And I'm proposing that if you're using the modality, the vehicle of gossiping as a strategic choice for clickbait, which I can assure you some of those folks are doing exactly that, then that's probably not a good use of your time.

00:13:24.440 And not a good use of the time of the listeners.

00:13:28.240 And so there are some people within that conservative movement that I used to listen to quite a bit.

00:13:34.560 I've stopped listening to it because I no longer found it interesting.

00:13:38.140 If I'm going to sit on the treadmill for 45 minutes, I want to be elevated.

00:13:43.480 I want to be hearing about ideas that are being discussed.

00:13:46.240 Let's discuss Donald Trump's, you know, isolationist policy, let's say, or whatever it is.

00:13:55.020 So we could talk politics, we could talk about Donald Trump, but not just mean girl stuff.

00:14:00.760 Yesterday, actually, we watched a movie, my family and I, called Nightcrawler.

00:14:08.340 I don't know if any of you have seen it.

00:14:09.960 I don't know how to pronounce this guy's last name, Jack or Jake Gyllendall or Gyllendall.

00:14:16.940 Well, I don't know how to pronounce it.

00:14:18.540 You know, very intense actor.

00:14:21.640 Spoiler alert, if you don't want to hear what happens in the movie.

00:14:26.660 He's basically a guy who becomes a nightcrawler.

00:14:29.320 A nightcrawler are those guys that get those police scanners and firemen scanners and they listen to it all night, hoping to then get to the whatever accident or whatever the tragedy is so that they can get the footage first.

00:14:51.480 And by getting the footage first, they could then sell it exclusively to some, you know, hey, I saw the guy shooting him or immediately after he was shot and his brains were bleeding.

00:15:04.700 And here for $5,000, I'll sell you the exclusive.

00:15:08.240 And what you're seeing there, the reason why I'm drawing the analogy is in the same way that many of the people in the conservative movement have now decided that gossip is their central, you know, content for clickbait.

00:15:22.060 And in nightcrawler, you see what happens when someone is not really a journalist because they're trying to provide information because it is newsworthy, but rather they even get involved in shaping the story.

00:15:38.160 I won't give that away.

00:15:39.100 I won't give the spoiler alert because they know that they could then get really good footage that they could sell to the highest bidder.

00:15:45.920 So certainly a complete lack of journalistic integrity, if not potentially legal and criminal considerations.

00:15:56.680 And so, again, gossip can be good, can be bad.

00:16:01.160 So what I'd like to do for the rest of today's period is to actually read you, and I hope you'll stick around.

00:16:09.280 I want to read you a whole section.

00:16:10.920 Many of you kept complaining that, you know, I didn't read, I didn't self-narrate the parasitic mind, and I didn't self-narrate my happiness book.

00:16:22.180 But I can assure you that as it stands right now, I am narrating suicidal empathy.

00:16:29.220 So this is your chance to get some self-narration.

00:16:32.720 By the way, in my original book, in my 2007 book, The Evolutionary Basis of Consumption, on pages 174 to 176, I do talk about the evolutionary roots of gossip.

00:16:44.760 But that's a much more academic and technical book.

00:16:47.580 So what I thought I would do instead is read from my 2011 book, The Consuming Instinct, What Juicy Burgers, Ferraris, Pornography, and Gift-Giving Reveal About Human Nature.

00:16:57.560 And I'm going to read from pages 164 to one, let me see, to page 168.

00:17:09.860 I think you'll like it.

00:17:11.360 I think you'll find it fun.

00:17:13.620 It really speaks to why it is that humans gossip.

00:17:17.540 Now, by the way, let me, before I start reading this, let me remind you of something that some of you might have heard me mention.

00:17:26.900 And so forgive me if it's repetitive for you, but let me mention it for those of you who don't know this stuff.

00:17:32.800 In evolutionary theory, you distinguish between two levels of scientific explanations, what's called proximate explanations and ultimate explanations.

00:17:43.880 And this is a profoundly important epistemological point.

00:17:49.620 Proximate explanations explain the how and the what.

00:17:53.680 Much of science operates at the proximate level.

00:17:56.900 What evolutionary theory does, though, is it adds an extra layer of explanatory power by explaining the ultimate explanation of the phenomenon.

00:18:07.920 Ultimate not in the superior sense.

00:18:10.280 Ultimate in the Darwinian why sense.

00:18:12.580 Why would we have evolved this particular behavior, this particular morphological trait?

00:18:18.560 So it's the Darwinian why.

00:18:20.720 So in order to fully explain any phenomenon, you need to explain things at both the proximate level and the ultimate level.

00:18:29.360 And so here, what we're going to do, what I'm going to read you these four or five pages,

00:18:33.960 is it'll be to explore gossip from a ultimate explanation.

00:18:42.340 Why did we evolve this penchant for gossip?

00:18:47.080 So here we go.

00:18:47.980 So on page 164 of The Consuming Instinct.

00:18:50.200 And by the way, I really would love for you guys to go out and get the book, not because I'm going to make $3 off you for buying it,

00:18:57.840 but because it really was my first attempt, at least in terms of books, of trying to reach a mass audience.

00:19:06.480 Because I had written several academic books.

00:19:09.020 I'd written many, many scientific papers and so on.

00:19:11.920 But I was itching to now have a broader voice.

00:19:15.460 I wanted to get people to be excited about evolutionary psychology, you know, as applied to human behavior in general and consumer behavior in particular.

00:19:23.760 And so The Consuming Instinct, my 2011 book, was that attempt to try to, you know, popularize the field that I had pioneered in evolutionary consumption.

00:19:36.800 So here we go.

00:19:37.580 Page 164.

00:19:39.120 The title of the section is Hungry for Gossip, TMZ versus General Hospital.

00:19:44.820 Social species have evolved elaborate communication systems in part to share ecologically relevant information with their group members.

00:19:53.120 The information can be relayed by several sensorial systems, including pheromones, example, social ants, vocalization, example, wolf howling, nonverbal cues, example, gelada baboons flipping their lips to show off their large canines, and bubbling, example, vibrations that male crocodiles emit as part of their courtship ritual.

00:20:15.800 My wife and I often joke that when we take out our two dogs out for a walk, their incessant sniffing is akin to our reading the gossip section of a newspaper.

00:20:26.520 In their case, they are reading, quote reading, the latest canine gossip news from the neighborhood via the urine markings.

00:20:34.360 This is one of the reasons that walking one's dog is important beyond the exercise benefits reaped by both humans and their canine partners.

00:20:42.640 The human ability to communicate via language is what differentiates us from all other species.

00:20:49.240 This allows us to share social information congruent with the complexity of our social world.

00:20:55.900 Of the endless functions that our language faculties serve, gossip is a universally important one.

00:21:02.240 Robin Dunbar's book, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, provides a thorough analysis of the adaptive value of this form of social exchange.

00:21:14.080 Not only do the great majority of conversations revolve around gossip, but also the contents of gossip deal with issues of evolutionary import.

00:21:23.160 We do not gossip about our neighbor's quest for self-actualization by his having purchased season tickets to the opera.

00:21:32.980 Rather, we are more than happy to gossip that his wife is cheating on him, that he has an impotence problem, that he has just lost his job, or how his wife's breast augmentation surgery went.

00:21:44.700 In the end, humans are particularly interested in gossiping about sexual matters, example, promiscuity or closeted homosexuality, as poignantly captured in the 1986 hip-hop song Rumors by the Times Social Club.

00:22:01.200 I spent quite a bit of time writing my first book, The Evolutionary Basis of Consumption, as well as this current one, at one of several cafes.

00:22:10.120 As might be expected in such public settings, I have been privy to endless conversations from surrounding tables.

00:22:17.080 Ambient noises travel even when one is trying to avoid eavesdropping.

00:22:22.060 I can assure you that I have seldom heard people engaging in deep intellectual conversations.

00:22:26.660 Most chats are either about mundane life decisions, example, we need to purchase a new dining, dining, diner table, or juicy gossip.

00:22:38.020 Evolutionary psychologists have actually studied what people gossip about and whom they gossip about.

00:22:43.260 This is very interesting.

00:22:44.220 Of ten possible sets of people, example, relatives, friends, acquaintances, individuals preferred most to gossip about friends for eight of the ten listed gossip topics.

00:22:58.420 These were substance related problems, drug abuse and drunken behavior, gambling problems, sexual misconduct, promiscuity and sexual infidelity, sexual dysfunction, and ethical and criminal lapses, academic cheating and computer theft, for example.

00:23:17.280 Receipt of a sizable inheritance and contracting leukemia were the two topics that people preferred to gossip about with relatives, about with relatives.

00:23:27.060 This is not surprising since swills are distributed according to genetic relatedness and life-threatening diseases are typically most anxiety-provoking when they strike our family members.

00:23:37.920 Of note, individuals preferred to gossip about same-sex individuals and about issues that are particularly important to each of the two sexes.

00:23:48.060 For example, men and women preferred to gossip about same-sex individuals who had gambling problems and were promiscuous respectively.

00:23:57.060 The bottom line is that we enjoy sharing social information about the vices and problems faced by same-sex others.

00:24:05.840 Incidentally, teenage girls are particularly amenable to using false gossip as a bullying tactic against intrasexual rivals as a means of damaging their reputation. 0.99

00:24:17.940 As the brilliant British philosopher Bertrand Russell quipped, no one gossips about other people's secret virtues, but only about their secret vices.

00:24:31.720 Numerous commercial offerings catered to consumers' insatiable appetite for celebrity gossip.

00:24:38.640 These include television shows such as TMZ, Entertainment Tonight, Access Hollywood, and Extra, as well as long-lasting tabloid magazines such as Star, National Enquirer, and People.

00:24:51.500 Think of the most memorable celebrity gossip you've heard over the past five years.

00:24:55.920 Now, remember, this is from 2011.

00:24:58.700 In most instances, the gossip is probably an example of one of the topics listed in the previous paragraph.

00:25:04.540 Drug abuse, example Amy Winehouse.

00:25:07.320 Drunken behavior, Lindsay Lohan.

00:25:09.740 Sexual infidelity, the politician John Edwards.

00:25:13.120 Promiscuity and infidelity, Tiger Woods.

00:25:15.960 Gambling problems, Michael Jordan.

00:25:18.160 Life-threatening diseases, Patrick Swayze.

00:25:20.400 And moral lapses, Mel Gibson's threats to his young girlfriend and drunken anti-Semitic diatribe.

00:25:28.300 Why do we care to exchange gossip about celebrities, all of whom are otherwise total strangers to us?

00:25:33.600 If we prefer to gossip about friends as discussed earlier, why do we care about celebrities?

00:25:39.660 Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist from the London School of Economics, has proposed a compelling explanation for this conundrum.

00:25:47.200 He argues that in the same way that pornography usurps men's evolved physiological reaction at the sight of seeing a naked woman,

00:25:55.340 example, getting an erection, even though it carries no reproductive benefit,

00:25:59.960 celebrities cause our affective system, which was originally meant to be activated in our interactions with real friends, to misfire.

00:26:08.280 And so you remember this idea of misfiring is something that I use in my forthcoming book, Suicidal Empathy.

00:26:13.960 Empathy is great when it is properly modulated.

00:26:17.620 When it misfires, it becomes maladaptive.

00:26:20.460 In other words, I'm continuing to read now.

00:26:23.100 In other words, adaptations meant to solve problems in our evolutionary environments can be artificially triggered in contemporary settings.

00:26:31.020 After all, many of these celebrities are invited into our homes on a weekly, if not daily basis.

00:26:36.980 We develop a sense of intimacy with the celebrities, if not the characters they play.

00:26:42.800 And in doing so, our brains are tricked into viewing them as part of our Dunbar circle. 0.58

00:26:50.340 Kanazawa demonstrated empirically a positive correlation between the extent to which people viewed particular television shows

00:26:57.600 and their satisfaction with their real-life friends.

00:27:00.960 For example, a woman watches several shows dealing with friendship, example, on a sitcom,

00:27:06.900 is more likely than others to transfer that illusory reality into her real-life friendships.

00:27:14.420 Moving beyond celebrity news, one can also explore the content of sensational news, example, headlines,

00:27:22.160 as a means of gauging the stories that capture our attention and tug at our emotions.

00:27:28.500 How do news outlets decide which stories are newsworthy?

00:27:33.140 I propose that stories that cater to one of the key Darwinian pursuits, survival, mating, kin, and reciprocity,

00:27:41.940 are likely to be heavily represented.

00:27:45.680 Headlines about predator attacks, natural disasters, and violent criminality

00:27:51.440 speak to our interest in stories of survival or death.

00:27:56.160 Captions about sexual misconduct are obviously catering to our obsession with all matters related to mating.

00:28:04.420 Gruesome stories about infanticide or uplifting ones about long-lost siblings who are reunited speak to the kin metal drive.

00:28:12.900 Finally, headlines about heroic acts of physical bravery,

00:28:17.220 example, jumping into a river to save a random stranger,

00:28:19.900 or of bewildering generosity a company owner bequeaths his firm to his employees upon his retirement,

00:28:27.520 represent the reciprocity meta drive,

00:28:30.940 acts of altruism toward non-kin, 0.97

00:28:33.360 typically rooted in the desire to establish bonds of reciprocity.

00:28:37.460 In a content analysis of gripping stories,

00:28:39.760 as reported on the front page of newspapers,

00:28:41.980 spanning more than 300 years and five continents,

00:28:47.120 North America, Europe, Oceania, Asia, and Africa,

00:28:51.240 many themes were manifestations of one of the four Darwinian meta drives,

00:28:56.360 including stories about courtships, meaning mating,

00:28:59.780 family dynamics, kin selection,

00:29:02.500 human attacks, survival,

00:29:04.860 and heroic acts of bravery, reciprocal altruism.

00:29:08.080 The frequency rankings of the various types of headline stories were invariant to cultural settings

00:29:15.060 and to particular epochs.

00:29:18.440 This suggests that the stories we most want to read are universally defined,

00:29:25.380 as they are precisely those that have had great import in our evolutionary past.

00:29:30.760 When watching news broadcasts or reading newspapers,

00:29:33.680 we are catering to our innate desire to gossip,

00:29:37.800 especially about information that was valuable to share in our evolutionary past.

00:29:42.800 I have about one more page, so bear with me.

00:29:45.240 I conclude this section with a brief discussion of soap operas.

00:29:48.920 By the way, what's happening now in the conservative movement

00:29:51.660 with all this snapping at each other is just a real-life soap opera, right?

00:29:57.140 This is a universal genre that is found across highly heterogeneous cultural settings.

00:30:02.740 Wikipedia lists soap operas originating from 55 different countries.

00:30:09.560 Several content analyses of soap operas have uncovered recurring universal themes

00:30:15.060 in this television genre, including sexual infidelity,

00:30:19.100 with the requisite paternity uncertainty,

00:30:21.840 power struggles, sibling rivalries, parenting challenges,

00:30:26.680 love and romance, bonds of friendships,

00:30:28.720 and a wide range of interpersonal betrayals and deceptions, to name a few.

00:30:34.940 All of these map quite clearly onto the Darwinian meta-pursuits discussed earlier.

00:30:41.540 Whether you are watching an Indian, Egyptian, American or Mexican,

00:30:46.300 known as a telenovela soap,

00:30:49.460 you can be assured that roughly the same set of issues

00:30:52.900 drive the open-ended storylines.

00:30:55.460 By the way, as a side note, I'm obviously not mentioning the footnotes

00:31:01.360 that correspond to each of these findings.

00:31:04.960 Okay, let's continue.

00:31:06.020 There's only one paragraph left.

00:31:08.160 Gossip is a central facet of soap operas. 0.93

00:31:12.300 The storylines within soap operas move forward,

00:31:15.180 in large part via the gossiping that takes place within the shows.

00:31:19.760 Soap opera characters are gossip maestros.

00:31:22.880 Then, viewers of soap operas engage in extensive gossiping

00:31:27.700 about the events that transpire within their favorite soaps.

00:31:32.100 As a matter of fact, there are several forums,

00:31:35.200 magazines, example, Soap Opera Digest and Soap Opera Weekly,

00:31:39.000 newspaper columns, websites, blogs, and other online communities

00:31:42.540 that exist for the sole purpose of gossiping about the events

00:31:47.260 that transpire within the fictional world of soaps.

00:31:51.020 No matter the cultural setting, the majority of soap opera viewers are women. 0.84

00:31:56.780 Accordingly, the contents of soaps are illustrative of the evolutionary forces

00:32:01.400 that have shaped women's sex-specific psychology.

00:32:05.420 For example, male protagonists fall under a very predictable universal archetype.

00:32:10.960 They are typically tall, to my great chagrin, for I am not tall,

00:32:15.100 powerful, that does hold true of me, socially dominant men, very true of me,

00:32:21.320 who hold prestigious occupations.

00:32:24.100 Yes, example, physician or CEO.

00:32:27.160 At times, they can also be high-risk-taking bad boys. 0.97

00:32:31.280 Feeble, effeminate, submissive, unemployed, short-statured men 0.96

00:32:36.340 are seldom, if ever, depicted as soap opera's heroes.

00:32:40.660 The bottom line is that successful products,

00:32:44.100 whether pornography, soap operas, or romance novels,

00:32:47.160 recognize the innate preferences of the target audience in question.

00:32:51.940 So that's the end of what I wanted to read from page 164 to 168

00:32:56.480 of The Consuming Instinct.

00:32:58.300 But to summarize, there are very clear evolutionary reasons why we gossip, right?

00:33:06.580 We are exchanging socially important information that has adaptive value

00:33:12.200 about members within our social circle.

00:33:15.500 We are a social species, so it makes perfect sense that we would engage in this behavior.

00:33:19.980 But like most things, for it to be an adaptive activity,

00:33:25.200 it has to be invoked at the right time for the right reasons

00:33:29.000 and the right situations and so on.

00:33:30.680 So, to summarize, when we're seeing the kind of backstabbing and gossiping,

00:33:39.080 it is so astoundingly not only mean-spirited, but short-sighted.

00:33:46.820 It's myopic in that what unites us within this movement

00:33:52.580 should be much greater than the individual snipes or snide remarks

00:34:01.060 and, you know, slights at each other.

00:34:05.140 And so what I would implore the people in question,

00:34:09.140 and I'm sure you can all recognize who they are,

00:34:11.720 don't care about mentioning them,

00:34:13.120 not because I'm afraid that I won't appear on their show.

00:34:16.440 So, believe me, the people on whose shows I can appear

00:34:21.760 are not the ones that are in this list,

00:34:25.640 and I'm not exactly having difficulty, you know, getting noticed.

00:34:31.880 So, my position stems from the fact that I wish to exactly not engage

00:34:36.540 in the type of idle gossip about what this one said about this one and so on.

00:34:42.040 There's a bigger issue.

00:34:42.940 Yes, there are cases where it's perfectly relevant and adaptive

00:34:47.240 and evolutionarily appropriate to gossip about people, 0.98

00:34:52.380 and the rest of it is complete idle bullshit. 0.87

00:34:56.940 Instead, let's unite in protecting liberty and protecting freedom 0.97

00:35:01.600 and protecting all of the foundational values

00:35:04.140 that make the West in general and the United States great. 0.97

00:35:09.080 So, rise above this bullshit and let's unite. 0.63

00:35:12.940 Thank you so much for all those who joined me. 0.96

00:35:15.240 It's taken about 35 minutes.

00:35:17.160 What I'll do is once I'm done here,

00:35:18.980 I usually will also post it on all of my platforms.

00:35:24.020 So, if you weren't able to make it to this live X Spaces,

00:35:28.280 don't worry, it'll be posted on my platforms.

00:35:31.040 Thanks for joining me.

00:35:32.440 I'll talk to you soon.

00:35:33.240 Cheers, everybody.

00:35:33.700 Cheers, everybody.

00:35:34.380 Cheers, everybody.

The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad - December 20, 2025

The Pros and Cons of Gossip (The Saad Truth with Dr. Saad_945)

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