Gossip: Men do it just as much as women, study finds

Nothing makes a good time like a little gossip. Although it is frowned upon, sociologists say gossiping is actually healthy.

The sociologists add that gossip is part of the society glue. Plus how else would news travel so fast?

A study by the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside), states that gossip is not just a favourite hang out activity among the women, but the men as well.

Daily Mail reported that the study design let the researchers eavesdrop on study participants' conversations - for science.

It revealed we spend nearly an hour of each day on average gossiping, and no one is above it.

Researchers at UC Riverside upended some traditional assumptions about gossip in their new study, published this week in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

They did so by fitting 467 (willing) participants with a listening device that randomly sampled snatches of their conversations throughout the day, capturing and recording about 10 percent of what they said.

Among the 269 women and 198, they heard 4,003 instances of gossip over the course of two to five days. That came out to an average of 52 minutes a day spent on gossip.

Everyone enjoys gossiping, but obviously not in the same way.

Although women spend more time gossiping, they only talk about what researchers term 'neutral'.

This means information shared does not include negative comments or judgments.

Young people are prone to making negative comments, but the reputation of richer people as less gossip-happy doesn't hold water, according to the study.

It found that poorer or less educated people gossip no more than the wealthy or well-educated.  

We all gossip, and it's part of the fabric of human nature and curiosity, and it even serves an important purpose.

In other words, we are biologically programmed to respond to and use gossip.