Hardwired Humans by Andrew O'Keeffe

Author:Andrew O'Keeffe [O'Keeffe, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Leadership
ISBN: 9781742980560
Publisher: Andrew O'Keeffe
Published: 2011-04-18T14:00:00+00:00

YOU’RE ON A COFFEE BREAK at a conference. You look around the room and notice a curious thing. The groups in which people are gathered are a consistent size. Hardly anyone is alone, and if they are they feel pretty uncomfortable because as a social animal if we are on our own in such a setting we feel awkward. All the groups are small, made up of two, three or four people. When a fifth person joins a group of four, within seconds the group either breaks into two groups of two and three, or one person wanders off to join another group. You’ll notice the same phenomenon at a party or wherever people stand around in informal gatherings. This phenomenon is a result of how we use our vocal capability.

We humans have the most developed vocal capability of any animal. Indeed, Dr Goodall nominates this as one of the two attributes that distinguishes us from chimpanzees (the other being our superior intellectual abilities). Combine this vocal capability with our instinct for social living and we have powerful ways in which our language capability is used. A major manifestation of this is seen in our natural urge to gossip - to engage in social chitchat.

There are two reasons why we gossip. The first is quite obvious - to gather and share information. Thousands of years ago this was a vital survival tool - to gain useful information about where the food sources were and the predators to avoid. The second and less obvious reason for gossip is to form and maintain alliances. For us, gossip is our form of grooming: to lubricate friendships, to create and service relationships, to establish reciprocity, to work out who we can trust, who we need to be careful of and to dance the delicate politics of community living.

Of course, ‘gossip’ may have negative connotations. That’s understandable based on the classification of the word from one’s prior experience, but while gossip may indeed be malicious, it need not necessarily be. It’s interesting, though, that communication wouldn’t quite do as the correct description of the instinct. While we have a verbal capability unique amongst animals, it’s the way we use that unique communication capability that is significant and of interest in our behaviour and the implications for life in organisations.

The definition of gossip, courtesy of Professor Robin Dunbar of Oxford, is ‘social chitchat’. These are conversations of a social nature, typically of the guess-what-I-just-heard variety, or you’ll-never-guess-what-the-boss-is-up-to-now type. For humans with our advanced vocal capability, gossip is our form of grooming.

Grooming is a characteristic of social animals such as monkeys and apes and the way in which they form bonds and alliances. Robin Dunbar provides an explanation of coalitions and gossip. Humans are social animals. While living in groups has its advantages, particularly as a defence against predators, it also has its tensions. If we upset others we are forced to be with it can be awkward. The mechanism that helps us balance this closeness-and-distance tension is by forming coalitions between small numbers of individuals.

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