Gossip and the Psychology of Other People’s Stories

If you are a woman, I guarantee you have either indulged in or been on the receiving end of gossip – probably both. This blog will explore the psychological complexities and theories of gossip, but fundamentally women love gossip because it gives us several psychologically rewarding things at once: social connection, a sense of belonging, access to privileged information, reassurance about our own position in the group, and the small thrill of understanding—or judging—someone who is not there to challenge the story.  Harsh? but true.

I started writing this blog following the death of Professor Jason Arday.  What struck me was how quickly allegations, interpretations, partial information and commentary became part of a huge public narrative about a real human being. I do not know what was true, what was untrue or what ultimately contributed to his death, and I am deliberately not going to speculate. His family and friends are grieving him, and they have my sincere condolences. But his death did make me think about something much broader: what happens when we stop distinguishing between what we know, what we have been told and what we have simply repeated? Gossip can be painful within a friendship group; when speculation is amplified nationally and online, the human consequences can be enormous.

I have recently found myself on the receiving end of gossip. Nothing new at my age. It happens whenever groups form, it’s inevitable. 

It wasn’t sophisticated gossip, not some dramatic scandal, because quite frankly I live a fairly boring but happy life nowadays. It was just the familiar process of one person telling their version of events to other people, shaping the narrative in a way that allows them to occupy the most favourable role while avoiding the rather more adult option of speaking directly to the person they are talking about.

Years ago, I suspect that would have bothered me far more than it does now. These days, one of the advantages of understanding psychology is that you can often see the process underneath the content.

Rather than becoming preoccupied with ‘’What exactly are they saying about me?’’, I am much more interested in ''What function is this serving? Who needs an audience? Who needs an ally? Who needs to be the victim? Who needs someone else to become the villain? And why is the story being told everywhere except to the one person who could actually challenge it?''

Once you understand triangulation, relational aggression, female social hierarchies, in-groups and out-groups, anchoring bias, confirmation bias, status regulation and the Karpman Drama Triangle, gossip starts to look rather different. It stops looking like harmless information-sharing and, in some situations, starts to look much more like social strategy and manipulation by those who might lack better strategies. 

That does not mean every complaint about another person is malicious. We all need to process difficult relationships, seek support and sometimes make sense of experiences with people we trust. I can honestly say my small group of intimate friends often hear me letting off steam and vice versa. There is, however, a very important difference between saying, “This is what happened and this is how I experienced it,” and saying, “Let me tell you what this person is really like.”

The first is an account of an experience. The second is an attempt to define a person and to drag others in to your perception. 

And unless you have somehow developed the ability to see inside another human being’s mind, you do not actually know what they are “really like”. You know how they behaved in certain situations, how you interpreted that behaviour, what meaning you attached to it and how it made you feel. That is useful information, but it is not the same thing as objective truth.

There is also another distinction that matters here, because I think we too easily collapse all negative talk about other people into gossip. Having an opinion about someone is not the same as gossiping about them. If I say, “I don’t particularly like her,” “We don’t get on,” or “She just isn’t my kind of person,” I am owning my subjective experience. I am not claiming universal truth; I am saying something about my relationship with that person. We are not all going to like one another, and pretending otherwise is neither psychologically realistic nor especially mature.

Gossip starts to become something different when I move from owning my view to trying to recruit others into it. If I begin supplying negative stories, interpretations and character judgements designed to shape how you see that person, I am no longer simply expressing an opinion. I am influencing reputation. I am trying, consciously or otherwise, to alter another person’s social position in your mind. That difference is subtle, but psychologically it is enormous.

The storyteller is always part of the story

One of the first things people forget when listening to gossip is that the narrator does not disappear from the narrative simply because they are talking about somebody else. Every story passes through a psychological filter. We notice some things and not others, remember particular moments more vividly, infer motives, fill in gaps and then organise everything into a version that makes sense to us.

Most of us construct stories in which our own behaviour remains understandable.

When we are angry, withdrawn or unavailable, we instinctively reach for context: we were exhausted, overwhelmed, hurt or needed space. When somebody else behaves in the same way, we are much more likely to turn behaviour into character — they are aggressive, unreliable, avoidant or manipulative.

Psychology captures this through ideas such as self-serving bias and the fundamental attribution error: we explain ourselves through circumstances, but other people through personality. In gossip, that difference matters because a momentary behaviour can very quickly become a permanent judgement about who somebody “is”.  Someone does something selfish and soon they are selfish. They become defensive in one situation and now they are defensive. They make a poor decision and suddenly someone knows “exactly what they are like”.

A complex human being gradually gets flattened into a character in somebody else’s narrative, and characters are much easier to judge than real people.

Gossip, triangulation and the need for an audience

Triangulation occurs when something that really belongs between two people is managed through a third. Rather than A speaking directly to B, A recruits C for support, validation or alliance. The Karpman Drama Triangle helps explain why this can be so compelling: A can occupy the Victim position, B becomes the Persecutor, and C is invited to become Rescuer. In gossip, it can be as simple as, “I’m upset with her, but instead of speaking to her, I’ll tell you what she’s really like.” This maybe because past experience of going straight to a person hasnt gone well and so now they lack that as a communication skill.

Someone says, “Can I tell you what she did to me?” or, “I just need you to understand why I have had to distance myself.” Perhaps they add, “I don’t want you to get caught out in the same way.” At first glance, this can sound like a straightforward disclosure. Sometimes it is. But sometimes something else is happening: you are not simply being asked to listen, you are being invited to take a position.

The storyteller becomes the injured party. The absent person becomes the Persecutor. You are subtly recruited into the role of Rescuer, validator or ally. The triangle stabilises when you say something like, “That is awful. I always thought there was something about her.”

At that point the storyteller has gained validation, you have gained intimacy through alignment, and the absent person has been assigned a role they had no opportunity to contest.

When everybody else is always the problem

There is another pattern worth noticing. One genuinely difficult relationship tells us very little; most people will encounter conflict, betrayal, exclusion or people who simply behave badly. But when the same story repeats across every part of someone’s life — every ex was abusive, every friend became jealous, every colleague was difficult, every boss was a bully, every group excluded them, and every falling-out was entirely somebody else’s fault — it becomes psychologically sensible to become curious about the one constant in all of those relationships.

That is not the same as blaming the person or dismissing what they have experienced. It is about recognising that repeated interpersonal patterns are data. In clinical psychology, we would not usually look at the tenth version of essentially the same relational difficulty and assume that ten unrelated people independently created exactly the same dynamic. We would start asking what the person may be bringing into relationships too: their expectations, attachment patterns, threat sensitivity, communication style, boundaries, conflict responses and assumptions about other people’s motives.

This matters particularly in gossip because some people seem to move through life with an ever-changing cast of villains. The names change, but the structure of the story remains remarkably consistent: somebody has always betrayed them, misunderstood them, excluded them, envied them or eventually “shown their true colours”, while they remain largely outside the problem themselves. At some point, critical thinking requires a slightly uncomfortable question: if everybody eventually becomes the villain, how plausible is it that everybody else is always the problem?

This is where ideas from schema theory and interpersonal psychology become useful. We do not simply enter relationships as blank slates. We carry assumptions about other people, expectations about rejection or betrayal, habitual ways of managing threat and learned strategies for dealing with conflict. Those patterns can influence what we notice, how we interpret ambiguous behaviour and how other people eventually respond to us.

Someone who expects rejection, for example, may become hypervigilant for signs of it, react defensively to ambiguous behaviour and inadvertently create distance in the relationship. The resulting distance can then be interpreted as confirmation that people always reject them, and they then create the narrative about others being rejecting.

That is why I become particularly cautious when somebody repeatedly arrives with stories in which they are faultless and everybody else is pathological. Emotionally healthy people are usually capable, at least eventually, of some degree of self-reflection. They may still believe another person behaved badly, but they can usually say something such as, “I handled that part badly,” “I should have spoken up earlier,” “I became defensive,” or “I can see why they interpreted it that way.” I am far from perfect, but anyone that knows me would hopefully tell you the first thing I do is hold my hands up to my actions, being defensive, or feeling hurt. When a person appears psychologically incapable of ever locating themselves inside the dynamics of their own relationships, that absence of self-reflection is itself meaningful information.

And it is especially relevant if they are asking you to join them in condemning the latest person.

Before accepting your assigned role in the triangle, it may be worth remembering the previous cast. If there has been a long procession of apparently dreadful people, you do not necessarily need to decide that the storyteller is the real villain either. Psychology is rarely that simplistic. But you should probably stop assuming that you are hearing a series of completely unrelated stories.

You may be hearing the same interpersonal pattern with different actors.

Sometimes the gossip reveals more about the storyteller

When somebody repeatedly talks about other people, it can be useful to listen not only to what they are saying, but to the patterns in how they interpret others. What behaviours repeatedly provoke them? What motives do they tend to assign? Are other people frequently described as jealous, attention-seeking, arrogant, disloyal, competitive or manipulative?  This could be projection which is when we unconsciously attribute to someone else feelings, motives or traits that are difficult to recognise or tolerate in ourselves.

This does not mean that every criticism is projection. Projection is another psychological concept that has become overused online, and sometimes people genuinely do behave badly. The more interesting psychological question is why certain behaviours carry particular meaning for a particular person.

For example, if confidence is repeatedly interpreted as arrogance, privacy as secrecy, independence as rejection, or disagreement as attack, that tells us something about the lens through which the behaviour is being understood. It does not automatically make the interpretation wrong, but it does suggest that the storyteller’s own experiences, beliefs and sensitivities may be shaping the meaning they give to what they see. It can often be their way to express anger or agressionin a way that feels safe to them.

Female aggression is often more relational than overt

Female aggression is particularly interesting because it is often relational rather than overt as it has historically been with men. Think boxing, pistols at dawn, compared to gossip in women.

Human groups form hierarchies. We may dislike the language, but we constantly monitor social position: who is admired, who is trusted, who is influential, who has access to whom, who is attractive, who is successful and whose opinion carries weight. Its human, its biological, its social.

Among women, these hierarchies can be particularly subtle because overt dominance is often socially discouraged, whereas historically it was encouraged in men. Status therefore may be managed through relationships, inclusion, reputation and coalition rather than direct declarations of power. Someone does not need to say, “I want to lower her status.” They can simply reframe the person. Confidence becomes arrogance. Success becomes showing off. Privacy becomes secrecy. Independence becomes disloyalty. Sexual confidence becomes promiscuity. Boundaries become selfishness. Visibility becomes attention-seeking.

The person has not necessarily changed. The social interpretation has.

Research suggests that while men are more likely, on average, to use direct physical aggression, women may be more likely in some contexts to use exclusion, reputation damage, alliance-building and rumour. That does not mean women are inherently more manipulative, or that men do not gossip; it means aggression often takes the form that is most socially available.

When social standing, belonging and reputation matter, they can become weapons. You do not need to attack someone directly if you can lower their position in the group, make others suspicious of them or quietly influence who includes them. The effectiveness of relational aggression is precisely that it often looks like concern: “I just think people should know,” or “I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

And that is what makes it so sad between women. We have enough to contend with without undermining one another inside our own groups. Another woman can be successful without diminishing your success, confident without threatening your confidence, attractive without reducing your worth, and different without being wrong.

Perhaps genuine female solidarity is not agreeing with every woman; it is being able to disagree with one without needing to diminish her.

Hierarchy complicates this. People who feel secure in their own position generally have less need to regulate somebody else’s. When status feels uncertain, however, gossip can become a way of restoring balance: if I cannot raise my own position, I can lower yours. That does not have to be conscious. The person may genuinely believe they are simply “warning” others, while the social effect is to alter reputation, alliance and rank.

Men gossip too, of course, but their gossip may more often centre on status, competence, rivalry, loyalty or reputation, whereas female gossip can be especially relational because social belonging and alliance are often more central to how aggression is expressed.

Within groups, the people most drawn to gossip are often those who are especially sensitive to status, belonging and alliance, while those most likely to believe and repeat it tend to be people who value group acceptance over independent judgement or who are already primed to see the target negatively.

In-groups, out-groups and why shared dislike creates closeness

Social Identity Theory, associated particularly with Henri Tajfel and John Turner, helps explain why gossip feels so socially powerful. Human beings divide the world into us and them with remarkable ease, and once those categories are established, we stop interpreting people equally.

Members of our own group receive context. Members of the out-group receive judgement. Our friend is blunt because she is honest; the woman we dislike is blunt because she is rude. Our friend cancelled because she was overwhelmed; the outsider cancelled because she is selfish. Our friend is private; she is secretive. Our friend is confident; she is arrogant.

One of the fastest ways to create an in-group is to identify a shared out-group. That is why shared dislike can create surprisingly intense friendships. Two people discover they dislike the same person and suddenly they have endless material: messages, screenshots, analysis, “Did you notice how she said that?” and “What do you think she meant by this?”

Gossip also persists because agreement feels good. Someone says, “I cannot stand her,” and you say, “Oh God, neither can I.” There is immediate alignment and a small burst of belonging.

Clinically, I would make an important distinction between validation and collusion. It is possible to validate somebody’s emotional experience without validating every conclusion they have drawn about another person. “That sounds as though it really hurt you” is validation. “Yes, she definitely did that because she is a narcissist” is not simply validation; it is an untested hypothesis being converted into certainty.

That distinction often disappears because people want agreement more than they want careful thought.

It feels like intimacy because there is disclosure, secrecy and agreement. But sometimes it is really coalition formation. Remove the common enemy and occasionally you discover there was surprisingly little relationship underneath it and nothing else to talk about.

Once the story is planted, we start looking for proof

One of the reasons gossip is so powerful is that once somebody gives us a frame for another person, we rarely meet that person completely neutrally.

Imagine I tell you, “You’ll probably like Helen, although she can be incredibly manipulative.” You then meet Helen and she asks someone for help. You may wonder whether she is manipulating them. She speaks confidently and perhaps you read it as controlling. She becomes upset and you wonder whether that is emotional manipulation. She goes quiet and suddenly it looks like sulking.

Had I instead said, “Helen has had a difficult year and can be a little anxious around new people,” exactly the same behaviours might be interpreted very differently. That is anchoring bias at work: the first meaningful information we receive creates a reference point, and subsequent behaviour is judged against it.

That initial framing becomes an anchor, and confirmation bias then does the rest. Once we expect someone to be selfish, manipulative, attention-seeking or difficult, we become much more alert to anything that appears to confirm it and far less interested in evidence that contradicts it. Generosity gets overlooked. Kindness becomes strategic. Quietness becomes passive-aggression. Confidence becomes arrogance. Almost anything can be absorbed into the existing story.

The accusation creates the lens, the lens determines what gets noticed, and what gets noticed is then treated as proof of the accusation. That is why gossip can be so difficult to undo: the person may never actually get the opportunity to be seen without somebody else’s interpretation already sitting in the room.

Negative information also has an advantage here because of negativity bias. We tend to give threatening, critical or socially damaging information more psychological weight than positive information. Tell someone that a person is funny, loyal, generous and kind, but once behaved badly in a relationship, and it is often the negative detail that sticks. So once a negative story has been planted, it is not simply remembered; it can become the organising principle through which everything else about that person is understood.

Gossip gets more certain as it travels

Another interesting feature of gossip is that ambiguity often disappears in retelling.

The person who witnessed something may originally say, “I thought she looked quite annoyed.” By the third telling it becomes, “She was furious.” Later it becomes, “She completely lost it.” Eventually someone says, “She has serious anger problems.”

Watch what happened. An observation became an interpretation, the interpretation became a description, and the description became a personality trait.

Nobody necessarily sat down and fabricated the story. Human communication simply tends to simplify, intensify and create coherence. The story becomes cleaner as it travels, and uncertainty gets stripped away.

Certainty is persuasive. It is not necessarily accurate.

Group polarisation can then push the story further. Someone begins as “a bit difficult”, becomes “toxic”, and before long somebody is confidently diagnosing a personality disorder from third-hand anecdotes. Modern psychological language makes this particularly seductive because it gives subjective judgement the appearance of expertise: “I don’t like the way she behaves” sounds like an opinion; “she’s a narcissist” sounds like a diagnosis. But diagnosing somebody you dislike from gossip is not psychology. It is gossip wearing clinical language.

Mature conflict allows another reality into the room

Psychologically mature conflict tends, where it is safe to do so, to involve direct communication.

It may be uncomfortable. It may involve hearing something you do not like. It may end without agreement. But at least both people are allowed into the room with their own version of events.

Gossip bypasses that entirely.

If I tell ten people my version before I speak to you, I have already achieved something powerful: I have framed the narrative first. You are no longer simply entering a disagreement. You are entering a social environment in which people may already have been told what your motives were, what you “always” do, what kind of person you are and perhaps even what psychological explanation accounts for your behaviour.

That creates a profound asymmetry. One person is responding to an event; the other has been shaping a reputation.

For people who struggle with accountability, direct conflict, tolerating another perspective or losing control of the narrative, gossip can become an effective alternative.

Direct conversations can be psychologically threatening because the other person may say something inconvenient. They may challenge your version, explain what you did, provide context you did not know or simply refuse to agree with your interpretation.

Direct conflict introduces complexity.

Gossip allows simplicity. You choose the facts, the framing and the audience, and the absent person cannot introduce contradictory information.

There are obviously situations where direct contact is unsafe or inappropriate, particularly in abuse, harassment, coercion or safeguarding contexts. But outside those situations, chronic triangulation can become a way of avoiding adult interpersonal responsibility.

Mature adults do not have to agree. They do, however, need some capacity to tolerate the existence of another perspective. If a friendship cant tolerate a direct conversation, it probably isnt a friendship, and people who struggle with others perspectives of them, or of being challenged are likely to be people who struggle with friendships full stop, or who gossip most.

What do you actually know?

This is the question I come back to most.

Someone can tell you a huge amount about another person and leave you feeling as though you know them. But what you actually know is more limited. You know what the storyteller noticed, what they remember, what upset them, what they think the other person’s motives were, what context they selected and what interpretation they reached.

You do not know the other person, you haven't 'heard all about them''

Psychological maturity means being able to say, “I believe that is how you experienced them,” without immediately making the leap to, “Therefore that is objectively who they are.”

That is much harder than simply choosing a side, because it requires uncertainty, humility and independent thought.

Why I no longer feel compelled to defend myself against every version of me

This is probably why gossip bothers me less than it once might have. Of course I do not enjoy it, I am human and who likes to know people have things to say about you that they don't say to your face, but I understand the mechanics.

If somebody needs to tell a particular story about me in order to occupy a particular role, I cannot control that. I also cannot chase every rumour, correct every interpretation or persuade every listener to see me differently. Doing so only pulls me further into their drama triangle.

What I can do is behave consistently with who I actually am, speak directly when something genuinely needs addressing and allow people to form their own views based on their own experience.  For me the only time I now address gossip is if there is potential reputational damage, or when it involves or impacts those I care about or my genuine friendships.

If somebody is willing to form a fixed opinion of me entirely from another person’s story, that tells me something useful too. Not necessarily about whether they are a good or bad person, but about their willingness to think independently, and I probably wouldn't enjoy a relationship with anyone that can't do that anyway.

Before deciding you know somebody, ask yourself a very basic question: How do I know what I think I know? Did I observe it? Did I experience it? Did several people independently report the same thing? Or did one person give me a story and I simply adopt it?

We demand more evidence when buying a house. We want analysis before making a diagnosis. We challenge methodology before accepting research findings. Yet socially, somebody can say, “Trust me, she is awful,” and another person’s reputation can be settled before lunch.

That is not critical thinking.

Gossip is not harmless just because nobody raises their voice

We tend to imagine aggression as something loud: shouting, threats, confrontation and obvious hostility. Relational aggression is often much quieter. It happens over coffee, in private messages, in apparently sympathetic conversations and under the guise of concern.

Sometimes it begins with, “I hate talking about people, but…” That sentence has probably introduced an extraordinary amount of gossip.

The absence of shouting does not mean the absence of aggression. Sometimes aggression is simply socially sophisticated, and the most interesting kind is the one that allows the aggressor to preserve the belief that they are simply “telling the truth”.

The impact of gossip on the person being talked about

What is often forgotten in all of this is the impact on the person at the centre of the story. Gossip is easy to dismiss as harmless because it happens in conversation, often casually and often when the person is not there. But relational aggression works precisely because reputation, belonging and social safety matter to us. If someone begins to sense that people are talking about them, excluding them, treating them differently or interpreting everything they do through a negative story they have never even heard, the impact can be profound.

People may become anxious, hypervigilant and preoccupied with what is being said. They may start scanning social interactions for signs of rejection, wondering who has heard what, questioning friendships and second-guessing ordinary conversations. In workplaces or friendship groups, this can create a sense of social threat that is difficult to escape because there is often no single incident to address. The damage sits in the atmosphere: a change in tone, fewer invitations, colder responses, conversations that stop when you walk into a room.

There can also be a deep sense of powerlessness. If somebody has created a version of you in rooms you were not in, you are being judged against a narrative you did not construct and may not even know exists. Trying to correct it can make you look defensive; ignoring it can allow it to spread. That bind is one of the reasons gossip can be so destabilising.

Over time, reputational gossip can affect trust, confidence, relationships and even how somebody sees themselves. A person who is repeatedly treated as difficult, untrustworthy or unlikeable may eventually become more guarded or withdrawn, which can then be taken as further “proof” of the original story. In that way, gossip can become self-fulfilling: the social environment changes around the person, their behaviour changes in response, and the group then points to that response as evidence that the gossip was right all along.

And of course, the impact is magnified online. A rumour that once might have stayed within a friendship group can now be repeated, screenshot, reshared and stripped of context at enormous speed. The person at the centre may be dealing not with one distorted conversation, but with hundreds or thousands of people forming opinions about them on the basis of information they have never verified.

That is why gossip is not trivial simply because it is verbal. Reputation is part of social identity, and damaging it can affect a person’s sense of safety, belonging and psychological wellbeing. Before passing something on, it is worth remembering that what feels like an interesting story to one person may be somebody else’s life.

The mature listener resists recruitment

The psychologically mature listener does something difficult. They resist the immediate invitation to join the triangle.

They can care about the storyteller without automatically condemning the absent person. They can say, “That sounds genuinely upsetting,” while still remembering, “I am hearing one person’s perspective.” They can distinguish between behaviour and inferred motive. They can notice when consensus may simply be repetition. They can question the anchor they have been given.

They can also distinguish between somebody owning an opinion and somebody attempting to export it. “I don’t get on with her” is a statement about a relationship. “Let me tell you why you shouldn’t trust her either” is a social intervention. The first leaves you free to form your own view. The second attempts to shape it.

Most importantly, the mature listener can tolerate not knowing. That is not fence-sitting. It is intellectual independence.

There are situations where disclosures must be taken seriously and action taken, particularly around abuse, violence, harassment, coercive control and safeguarding. But ordinary interpersonal conflict is usually much messier.

Two people can both feel injured. Two people can both behave badly. Two people can remember the same conversation differently. Someone can act badly without being a globally bad person.

And a compelling storyteller is still a storyteller.

Perhaps the most psychologically intelligent question in any gossip exchange is not simply, “Is this true?”

It is: “What do I actually know, and what and why am I being invited to believe?”

Because when somebody tells you they know exactly what another person is like, what you often know with certainty is something much narrower. You know how they think about that person. You know their interpretation, their emotional reality, their selected evidence and the role that person occupies in their story.

You know the story. You do not necessarily know the person.

A final note from me

Whilst I have used myself as an example in this blog, I am not writing this about me. I wanted to write it as a thought provoking article. The reason I began thinking more deeply about this was the discussion surrounding Professor Jason Arday. I do not want to speculate about circumstances I do not know, nor do I think any of us should casually convert rumour, fragments of information or somebody else’s interpretation into fact.

Whatever the situation, there are real human beings at the centre of these stories, and there are families, friends and colleagues who live with the consequences of what is said and shared. That matters even more when gossip leaves a friendship group or workplace and becomes amplified online, where a claim can reach thousands of people before anybody has stopped to ask whether it is actually true.

Perhaps that gives us a very simple responsibility: before repeating something about another person, ask what you actually know to be true. Did you witness it? Is it verified? Are you repeating a fact, an interpretation, a rumour or simply somebody else’s grievance? And if you do not know, what exactly is gained by passing it on?

If you read this blog about gossip and immediately wondered whether it was about you — but didn’t have the same reaction when I wrote about self-harm, domestic abuse, trauma or any number of other subjects, then that reaction itself may be worth noticing.

We are often most likely to personalise something when it touches a behaviour, dynamic or discomfort that already feels psychologically relevant to us, and whether we like it or not we all gossip to a certain extent. That does not mean the piece was written about you because it wasn't written about anyone; it may simply mean that something in it felt familiar enough to activate defensiveness, recognition, guilt or unease. Sometimes the more useful question is not “Is this about me?” but “Why did this particular piece make me wonder if it was?”

I am not writing this because I think gossip can ever be eradicated. It cannot. It is part of how human groups bond, organise themselves and make sense of one another. I have done it, you have done it, and most of us will do it again. The point is not moral superiority; it is awareness and responsibility.

And perhaps the same responsibility sits with the listener. You do not have to accept every invitation into somebody else’s triangle. You do not have to inherit their enemy, repeat their story or confuse their confidence with evidence. You can listen, empathise and still retain your own judgement. And once you repeat the story, you are no longer merely the person who heard the gossip. You have become part of the mechanism by which somebody else’s interpretation acquires the appearance of fact.

Thankfully, I have reached a stage in my own life where I am far less interested in chasing every version of me that exists in somebody else’s conversation.  Crikey, there must be multiple versions of me living in other people’s heads by now — and each probably makes perfect sense from that person’s perspective. That does not make any one of those versions the whole truth about me.  I know that people will interpret me through their own histories, insecurities, loyalties and biases, just as I will sometimes do with them. And that is ok.

These days, I tend to address gossip only where there is genuine potential for reputational harm, where it affects someone I care about, or where the relationship itself matters enough to warrant a direct conversation  Beyond that, I would rather let my behaviour speak for itself.

Perhaps that is ultimately the point. We are all capable of gossip, but we are also capable of being more thoughtful than the impulse. We can disagree without recruiting an army. We can dislike someone without needing everybody else to dislike them too. We can support another woman without experiencing her success, confidence or difference as a threat. We can hear a compelling story about somebody without mistaking it for the whole person. And we can stop before pressing “share” and ask whether what we are about to contribute is something we genuinely know, or simply something we have been told.

Because if there is one thing I would want you to take away from this, it is this: before you decide who somebody is on the basis of what you have heard, ask yourself whether you actually know the person — or whether you simply know somebody else’s story about them.

As always until next time

Carla