We knew it all along, of course, but now a top psychiatrist says so, too: Page Six is good for you!
“You don’t have to feel guilty about reading Page Six anymore,” Dr. Samantha Boardman asserts in her blog, Positive Prescription.
“It might even be good for you and society,” the doctor adds in extolling the virtues of any ripping bit of dish about pals, pols, personalities or partners.
As a clinical instructor and assistant attending psychiatrist at Weill-Cornell Medical Center, Boardman knows her way around a neuron and a news item.
In a blog post headlined “Good Gossip: Why Page Six is Good For You,” Boardman insists that while gossiping has a bad rap, “everybody does it.”
“About 65 percent of people’s discussions involve gossip, and there is an evolutionary explanation for our fascination with other people’s lives,” she writes.
“The theory is that natural selection favors knowing as much as you can about other people in your social network, whether they are an authority figure, potential partner, teacher, friend, political ally or enemy.”
Or, apparently, Hugh Jackman, J.Lo or Kanye West.
Boardman cites a study by the University of California, Berkeley, that found gossiping about people who have behaved badly — think Paula Deen or Alec Baldwin — plays an important role in keeping the social order.
In the study, subjects who watched others cheating at games experienced an increased heart rate. But reporting the cheating to others via “gossip notes” brought their heart rates back down.
“Gossip plays a critical role in deterring exploitation and promoting cooperation,” Boardman writes, and can be a useful warning against untrustworthy people.
Gossip also fosters social connections and can even lower stress, Boardman writes.
That is, unless you happen to be in charge of Page Six itself, tasked with digging the freshest dirt in the celebrity-news biz.
“I am glad to hear gossip is good for you,” joked Emily Smith, Page Six’s editor. “But on some days, it feels like it is killing me.”