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. It is also used to strenghten our [[social capital]]. Therefore people uses more time in gossiping then in In actual planing and doing.  When sharing information, people do not usualy look for imdate results. They are, in most cases, just want to unlad the havy burden. They will appriciate good advise or help, after they will unload the burden. People with low self-esteem and [[FFFF]] or [[system 1]] decison making system, the will use gossip is used to get reasurance that we they 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.