When is gossip good? When is gossip bad?

Lovely piece from the NYT on a moral dilemma I face all the time.

Is gossip good? Gossip it makes cooperation easier. Gossip makes the gossipers feel emotionally closer. And gossip gives people a game-theoretic reason to be nice to each other. People who are not very nice tend to be the wrong end of negative gossip.

Or is gossip bad? People find it easier to believe the gossip rather than the hard facts, even when hard facts are easily accessible. People get hurt for no fault of their's because of gossip. That feels terribly unfair.

There seems to be truth on both sides of the argument. One thing both sides agree on is that gossip is something evolution hard-wired us to do. We're human. We can't live with gossip, can't live without gossip.

This article reports on some really elegant behavioural experimentation about gossip.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/science/16tier.html?ex=1350878400&en=51649aec31cb2ecc&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink