Brain Science of Gossip: Study Explains How We Choose Who to Tell and Why
How does gossip travel through our social circles — and why do some secrets spread faster than others? A new study from Brown University sheds light on the invisible rules that shape how information moves through networks. By analyzing both artificial and real-world social groups, the researchers reveal that our decisions to share gossip are far from random — and rely on surprisingly complex mental models.
Note: This article is intended for general information and educational purposes. It summarizes scientific research in accessible language for a broad audience and is not an official scientific press release.
Why do some rumors make their way around a group in days, while others quietly fade away? Researchers at Brown University (USA) set out to answer this question using methods from cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, and computational modeling.
In this study, the term “social network” refers to real-world webs of friendships and acquaintances — like your group of friends, classmates, or colleagues — not online platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. The research team discovered that the hidden rules people use to share gossip in everyday life closely resemble the algorithms that power the spread of viral content in social media.
Their study, “Knowledge of information cascades through social networks facilitates strategic gossip,” first shared as a preprint in August 2024 and officially published in Nature Human Behaviour in July 2025, shows that our brains are naturally wired to share gossip in ways that maximize its spread while protecting us from unwanted consequences.
Rather than simply chatting at random, people instinctively calculate who is safest and most effective to gossip with, based on how popular and connected each person is within a social network. These findings highlight the sophisticated mental strategies and “computational power” our brains use in everyday life.
What the Researchers Investigated
The Brown University team set out to understand how people decide who to share secrets with, especially when those secrets are about someone else in the group. The researchers defined gossip as talking about a third party who is not present. Their central research question was: how do people spread information widely while minimizing the risk that it circles back to the subject? This question goes to the heart of cognitive science — the study of how our minds process, store, and use information in social contexts.
To address this, the scientists combined laboratory experiments with real-world social network data. They investigated whether people rely on conscious planning, intuition, or mental mapping to choose the best gossip partners.
How the Study Was Conducted
The research consisted of four key experiments.
In the first three experiments, more than 500 online participants interacted with an artificial nine-person social network. Each “person” in the network had a different number of friends, representing various levels of popularity. Participants were shown who was friends with whom and sometimes given information about trustworthiness. Their task was to decide, for each scenario, who would be the best person to share a piece of gossip with, given the goal of spreading it widely but not letting it reach the person the gossip was about.
In the fourth experiment, the researchers studied a real-world network. Nearly 200 first-year Brown University students mapped their actual friendships in their residence halls. A subset of these students then estimated how likely it was that a particular piece of news would reach specific people, depending on who first shared it.
According to the original study, these setups allowed the researchers to examine how people unconsciously build mental “social maps.” These internal representations help individuals predict how gossip is likely to spread through a network, even when they cannot consciously recall every relationship.
What Makes This Study New
The study breaks new ground in cognitive science by directly linking everyday social decisions with complex brain processes. The researchers found that people, without formal training or conscious awareness, use strategies similar to those employed by algorithms that drive viral content on social media.
When deciding whom to gossip with, individuals automatically consider two main factors:
- how popular a potential recipient is (number of friends);
- how far removed they are from the person who is the subject of the gossip (social distance).
This process, as described by the study authors, happens instinctively and relies on mental models that act like “cognitive maps” of the social world. Even when people are not fully aware of all the connections in their social group, their brains compress memories of interactions into a usable map, allowing for educated guesses about how far a secret might travel.
Importantly, the study finds that these calculations are not just about popularity or trustworthiness alone — it’s the combination of both popularity and distance that guides our choices. This insight helps explain why some gossip spreads rapidly and widely, while other rumors never gain traction.
Key Findings from the Study
According to the original research:
- People are most likely to gossip with those who are both popular and not directly connected to the target of the gossip. This strategy increases the chance that the information will travel far but decreases the chance that it will get back to the person being discussed.
- Participants in both artificial and real social networks consistently used social distance and popularity to predict where gossip would flow. Even in complex, real-world dorm networks with thousands of possible friendship ties, students accurately judged which connections would make gossip spread more or less efficiently.
- Most people do not consciously track every relationship. Instead, the brain forms compressed, functional maps that let us make quick, effective social predictions.
- The research team built computational models to compare different strategies for information flow. They found that people’s decisions closely resemble “cascade” models, which are also used by social media platforms to predict how content goes viral.
- The findings challenge the stereotype that gossip is idle or thoughtless. The mental calculations behind gossip show how the brain handles huge amounts of social data, much like the algorithms running online networks.
- The authors also note that when participants were given extra information about trustworthiness, they could adapt their gossip strategy accordingly, further showing the flexibility of these mental models.
The Role of Cognitive Mapping
Journalists at Neuroscience News highlight that a core insight from this research is the role of cognitive mapping in gossip and social navigation. They summarize that previous work by the team had already shown that people replay memories of daily interactions (sometimes even while sleeping) to update their mental maps of social relationships. In the new study, these maps guide not just who we trust, but how we estimate the spread of information through a web of friendships.
As summarized in the Neuroscience News lay report, the researchers note that the brain’s approach to gossip is so sophisticated, it resembles the algorithms that drive the spread of viral content on social media platforms. According to the article, this suggests that the strategies our brains use to share information within real-world social groups may mirror computational rules that technology companies have only recently begun to implement in digital networks.
Authors’ Conclusions
The study’s authors conclude that people’s ability to gossip strategically depends on hidden but powerful cognitive processes. By unconsciously combining social distance and popularity, individuals are able to share secrets widely while minimizing risk. These findings underline how gossip is not random or trivial but rooted in the brain’s remarkable talent for social reasoning.
The researchers acknowledge that their artificial networks were simpler than real social environments, and that future studies will need to look at more factors and diverse types of relationships. Nonetheless, the basic mechanisms appear robust even in complicated, real-world settings.
The preprint of this study is available at: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/yq82d_v1. The final peer-reviewed article was published in Nature Human Behaviour (subscription required): DOI: 10.1038/s41562-025-02241-2. Additional coverage and commentary can be found at Neuroscience News (https://neurosciencenews.com/gossip-brain-neuroscience-29395/).
The information in this article is provided for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. For medical advice, please consult your doctor.
