MOST women may be physically weaker than men, but they have a formidable
weapon at their disposal: gossip. Nattering to each other in this way could be
why women form such strong social bonds, says anthropologist Nicole Hess from
the University of California at Santa Barbara.
In prehistoric times, men cooperated to hunt or see off rivals competing for
their mates. But Hess wondered what made women first form cooperative social
groups. 鈥淢y feeling, growing up as a female, was that women also have strong
coalitions. They form strong friendships too.鈥�
She thinks gossip could be the key. By chatting to each other, women have a
powerful weapon that could be used to outcompete their rivals for precious
resources.
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Hess and her colleague Edward Hagen tested the idea by asking men or women to
imagine that they had discovered someone cheating in a competition, at the
expense of a real-life friend. The cheater warned them to keep quiet, otherwise
they鈥檇 be beaten or bad-mouthed. Depending on the scenario, the cheater was
either alone, or backed up by a group of allies.
Men threatened with violence were less likely to expose a cheat if he had
back-up. But if told they would be gossiped about, it made no difference whether
the cheat had allies or not. For women, the opposite was true. The number of
enemies was unimportant when violence was threatened. But if faced with verbal
punishment, they were more likely to keep quiet if the cheater had friends.
Hess says this shows that women who share information within a group have a
powerful advantage鈥攖hey could use gossip to damage the reputations and
social status of their rivals. This ploy may have helped them secure more food
and material resources for themselves and their children.
Men competed in warfare and other physical or violent confrontations, and
were judged on obvious traits such as strength and hunting ability. But women鈥檚
key attributes of fertility and fidelity are less obvious, so they were more
vulnerable to gossip, Hess says.
Social anthropologist Camilla Power of the University of East London in
Dagenham agrees. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a great idea,鈥� she says. 鈥淚n evolutionary terms, gossip
was started by women.鈥�
But she isn鈥檛 convinced that gossip was the reason women formed groups in the
first place. You need trust for gossip to work, otherwise no one will believe
you, she says. And women would need to form coalitions for that trust to
develop.
