Talking Bad About People: Why We Do It

You're at someone's house for dinner and the entire time you're looking around, observing them and their lifestyle in search of reasons to talk bad about them when you leave. It sounds harsh but so many of us do it. Why does talking bad about people seem like a compulsive behavior we can't control?

Talking bad about people is something humans have likely done since developing language. I call to mind the episodes of The Andy Griffith Show with Aunt Bea, Clara, and the other women of Mayberry dishing out juicy nuggets of gossip at the diner. Although a comical situation it's a perfect example of how we thrive on talking bad about people.

So what's the appeal?

Talking bad about people makes us feel significant. It feels good to notice ways other people fall short of perfect. Maybe someone doesn't keep a clean house, maybe they spend time with a person you don't like, or they work in a field you consider inferior. We're capable of finding just about anything to criticize people for.

It seems the need to talk bad about people is motivated by the "survival of the fittest." How do we get to be the fittest? By ensuring other people are not. And how do we ensure other people are not? By putting them down, criticizing them, talking bad about them.

Notice the next time you're putting someone down that on some level you feel good while doing it. You get a little self esteem boost from it. By the other person being inadequate in some way, you feel more adequate.

What about the claim that we enjoy talking bad about people simply because gossip is entertaining? Why do you suppose it's so entertaining? Because it is motivated by our need to be better, it is driven by our basic survival instincts. It may sound silly, but when you think about it almost everything we do is, on some level, motivated by our drive to survive.

We're not consciously thinking to ourselves as we gossip about others that we are doing so out of a need to survive. It's an underlying force that motivates us to do so.

None of this is to say that every time we criticize someone or say something negative about them that we're doing it in order to feel superior; it's the compulsive almost addictive tendency to talk bad about people that seems to be driven by our need to be superior.

So, if you've ever wondered why it is that talking bad about people seems to be so appealing, well, here you have it.