Gossip, I think, is dervied from the need to talk with others and look at problems from other perspective. It is a basic need to share in order to let the group [[The problem of coordination|coordinate]] more easly. While gossiping, people can create better [[SON]]s, and commun culture. Therefore people uses more time in gossiping then in In people with low self-esteem and [[FFFF]] or [[system 1]] decison making system, the gossip is used to get reasurance that we are OK, and the others are bad. Therefore when there is a society with high precentage of [[system 1]]/[[FFFF]] decision system ([[Conservatives and Liberals|conservatives]]), we may observe a lot of smear campains. In social wars, partisans may try to harm other by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smear_campaign smear campain], carried by gossip.