We all like to talk about other people

There are many ways to classify human conversations. We greet each day, explain, inform, lie, reveal secrets, confide our feelings, and weave the story. But most of us like to talk about others.

Try standing in an office and listening to any two people talking to each other. Even if they started talking about the weather, they finally turned to talk about someone.

Such chatter is only really problematic when it turns into an exchange of bad, secret information for the purpose of harming others. And often it's not based on a practical basis.

But the primate Robin Dunbar, at the Institute of Anthropology and Cognitive Anthropology, Oxford University, UK, said that talking about other people is not always bad. Instead, it is an evolutionary way to link large groups of people together.

Many other primates, like baboons, live in large herds and they consider grooming each other as a social tool to maintain relationships. But through evolutionary history, human communities have become too big and no one has enough time to take care of each person they need.

Gossiping, talking about others, has gradually replaced grooming to become a glue between people.

Gossip can be a natural part of people, but not that we were born know how to do it. Children learn the art of communication through the lens of social inclusion - talk politely to adults, do not swear in public, use grammar correctly, be serious with what they say. Children also quickly understand that language can be used, to control others only with words.

"Not me, she does," a child pointed at others. "Mom, I'm so pretty today, I bought you a bicycle" , this sentence has been effective at least once. And as many parents know, only a small child with very few words can be proficient in asking what he wants with pleading words.

Not surprisingly, these children will turn into adults who use communication tools to mislead others for their own purposes.

At the most impartial level, talking about other people is simply sharing information - "See the guy there? He is my friend's brother. He is very pleasant . " But the information will have a different nuance when it is said by a bit of venom - "Did you see that guy? I heard he was a miserable brother of his friend" And so the conversation continued, adding negative information about the subject.

Meanwhile, the grooming activity of baboons never does that.

MT