Chisme Is Actually A Survival Tool, Study Finds

So it turns out that chisme is actually a way that we, as human beings, mange our social lives and increase our chances of survival. A new study in the journal Science found that chisme, specifically negative chisme, helps us navigate our surroundings by changing the way we see the people we’re chismeando about. MSNBC reported:

“What we know about someone influences not only how we feel and think about them, but also whether or not we see them in the first place,” write the study authors, led by Lisa Barrett, a Northeastern University psychologist. Most of us believe that what we see influences what we feel — but in this case, what the volunteers felt about a person’s face influenced whether they saw it at all…

They showed participants an image of a neutral, androgynous face in one eye, and an image of a house in the other. If they’d told the volunteers something negative about the face — for example, that the person threw a chair at a classmate — the volunteers were more likely to focus on the face than if they hadn’t been told any gossip. “There is something special about this negative information — you’ll be more conscious of a face when you know something bad about it,” Barrett says. “So gossip has an effect on how your visual system works.”

In other words, being chismoso helps you literally see the people around you better. If you’re chismeando about someone like, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger who has power and influence, it would behoove you to better observe them, right? Anyway, it’s an interesting study, and it seems logical, if you ask me. As a reporter, I always found that chisme was great for tips because it almost always originated with some kernel of truth.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD