Evolutionary Scientists and Gossip

We begin our new series with those who are proponents (of some kind or other) of gossip.

Biologist Robin Dunbar believes, “Without gossip, there would be no society. In short, gossip is what makes society as we know it possible.”¹ Professor Dunbar explains how he arrives at this breathtaking conclusion in his book Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language.² He argues that gossiping is a Darwinian adaptation that prehistoric primates (the predecessors of modern humans) developed to increase the survival of the species. In fact, Dunbar believes that language itself was developed for the purpose of gossip.³ Much like grooming does among present day monkeys, language fostered group cohesion. It also helped individuals to know who could and could not be trusted within the group.

Frank McAndrew explains this theory and makes an application.

The social intelligence needed for success in this environment required an ability to predict and influence the behavior of others, and an intense interest in the private dealings of other people would have been handy indeed and would have been strongly favored by natural selection. In short, people who were fascinated with the lives of others were simply more successful than those who were not, and it is the genes of those individuals that have come down to us through the ages. Like it or not, our inability to forsake gossip and information about other individuals is as much a part of who we are as is our inability to resist doughnuts or sex—and for the same reasons.⁴

Apparently, we can’t help ourselves. Gossip is our very nature and “a social skill rather than . . . a character flaw.”⁵ Religious skeptic Michael Shermer picks up on this in his book, The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule.⁶ Shermer goes one step further, arguing that both religion and divinity “evolved along a parallel track.”⁷ He says that religion is “a social institution that evolved as an integral mechanism of human culture to encourage altruism and reciprocal altruism, to discourage selfishness and greed, and to reveal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of the community.”⁸

I cannot help but disagree. These scientists’ sweeping claims rely upon many  assumptions about evolution that I do not share. Their theories are called “science,” but, especially because of their historical nature (about pre-history!), they are not easily verifiable. I believe in Christianity–that the one true God actually made the universe and all that is in it, revealed himself in history to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, rescued a people for himself out of Egypt and into Canaan, and supremely revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ who died and rose again when Pilate was Roman governor of Palestine. Some religions may have arisen as Shermer suggests, but Christianity is based upon the actual invasion of God into human history. And language, while serving many useful ends, is, in fact, a gift of God for people to use to bring him glory.

Ironically, however, given Dunbar’s broad definition of gossip, I cannot help but agree with his conclusion that it makes society possible. For Dunbar, gossip is simply exchanging important social information informally.⁹ The Bible does not challenge the idea that telling stories about people creates the building blocks of reputations and relationships. On the contrary, the Bible encourages the careful use of words and story to build community within the church, a process it calls “fellowship.”¹⁰

But these scientists don’t make a clear distinction between the good and healthy exchange of social information and evil and unhealthy gossip.¹¹ Because of their anthropological conclusions, they miss important ethical dimensions. In their view, humans are merely highly developed animals, a combination of DNA, chance, and the effort to survive, and therefore, they cannot help being interested in others’ lives and talking about people in indiscriminate ways. Humans must obey our instincts, base or not. But the Bible presents humans as creatures made in the very image of God and capable of grandly using the gift of language to do much more than simply propagate our species.

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¹Robin I. M. Dunbar, “Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective,” Review of General Psychology 8, no. 2 (2004): 100. Dunbar researches and teaches at the University of Liverpool.

²Robin I. M. Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

³Robin I. M. Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 132-170.

⁴Frank T. McAndrew, “The Science of Gossip: Why We Can’t Stop Ourselves,” Scientific American, October 1, 2008. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-science-of-gossip (accessed July 26, 2011).

⁵Ibid. McAndrew ends his article, “But in case you find yourself becoming just a tiny bit intrigued by some inane story about a celebrity, let yourself off the hook and enjoy the guilty pleasure. After all, it is only human nature.”

⁶Michael Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule (New York: Times Books, 2004).

⁷Ibid., 46.

⁸Michael Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule (New York: Times Books, 2004), 46. For more on the theory of reciprocity, see Ralf D. Sommerfeld, Hans-Jürgen Krambeck, Dirk Semmann, and Manfred Milinski, “Gossip as an Alternative for Direct Observation in Games of Indirect Reciprocity,” PNAS 104, no. 44 (October 30, 2007): 17435-17440, http://www.pnas.org/content/104/44/17435.full.pdf (accessed July 26, 2011). These scientists used a multi-player computer game to measure how much humans value the opinions of other players about fellow players’ reputations in making their gaming choices. Not being a scientist, I find it difficult to evaluate this evidence, but it seems clear that their definition of gossip is very broad, including all kinds of stories about other people–not just negative ones. It seems that this study mainly concludes that informal stories about others are very powerful–something the Bible certainly also affirms.

⁹Robin I. M. Dunbar, “Gossip in Evolutionary Perspective,” Review of General Psychology 8, no. 2 (2004): 103-106.

¹⁰Biblical fellowship includes issuing warnings when necessary. In condemning sinful gossip, the Bible does not rule out the possibility of saying negative but true things about people when trying to protect and aid someone else. Dunbar’s “free riders” (those who do not reciprocate in the exchange of help within the community) do not get a free ride from God. But the Bible goes further in protecting the community. Jesus’ Golden Rule teaches that in those moments of necessary warning Christ-followers must be as careful with others’ reputations as they would want others to be with their own.

¹¹Dunbar does have a long chapter entitled “The Scars of Evolution” where he explores the dark side of language and offers suggestions for developing ethics out of an evolutionary framework. Robin I. M. Dunbar, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 192-207. Shermer presents his arguments for “provisional ethics” in the second section of his book. Michael Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule (New York: Times Books, 2004), 141-264. These attempts at ethics without any divine dimension seem very hollow to me. If I believed their worldview was correct, I wouldn’t see any true reason to be good except survival and occasional pleasure.