It's known that people around the world love to read gossip about their favorite celebrities. Maybe it's because we feel that it's important to know everything about them, whether it's the truth or merely a product of a wagging tongue (and active imagination). Our appetite for celebrity gossip is still unsatisfiable, which isn't exactly surprising. Considering it's a combination of our two favorite things: fame and bad news, we still read these write-ups.
But why do we love it?
Before Bieber Fever and the One Direction mayhem even saw the light of day, there was "Lisztomania." It is the intense fandom for mid-1800s Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, who was both good looking and a talented musician. People were captivated with everything Liszt did, from where he went to who he was spending his time with. In many ways, the desire to know these things has not gone away.
Our brain is wired to tune into gossip, but there's something interesting about celebrity gossip that people can't seem to get enough of. People indulge themselves reading and talking about it, because let's be honest, talking about celebrities is way better than listening to everyday office chatter.
Our interest in celebrity gossip has in fact carried on throughout history. In the book, FAME: What the Classics Tell Us About Our Cult of Celebrity, author Tom Payne traces this fascination back to early human civilizations and our ancestors' love for martyrs and saints, The Atlantic reported.
Daniel Kruger, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Michigan, explained that our desire to know things about people of high-status is a characteristic we share with other primates, and that it is because of an evolutionary strategy that may have helped us live longer than others.
Kruger told LiveScience that he believes there are two benefits to celebrity gossip: the first is for our own, being able to know more about high-status individuals do, so it could probably help us become one. And second is on the political side, where we can gauge the society we move in. Knowing what is going on with high-status individuals will ultimately help you move around the social scene.
