favorite band, when and where the cover photographs were
taken, etc. Or consider the more extreme case of British
"trainspotters." (For non-British readers, I should explain that
these are people who spend entire weekends watching trains;
their goal is to tick as many boxes as possible in a catalogue of
all the rolling stock used by every railway company, including
every locomotive and carriage type.) Such characters tattle
about matters of no relevance to social interaction. We do not
praise them for that; we just think they are not quite normal.^26
There is no human society without gossip. Yet there is vir-
[124] tually no human group where gossip is praised for its great
informative value, for its contribution to social interaction, for
its great usefulness. Why is that? The universal contempt for
gossip stems from two equally important factors. One is that
as much as we want to hear about other people's status and sex
and resources, we are reluctant to broadcast such information
about ourselves. Again, this just shows that information is a
resource: it is not to be squandered. Another reason is that
every bit as much as we like gossip, we also have to represent
ourselves as trustworthy. This is necessary if we want to main-
tain any stable social interaction, particularly cooperation,
with other people. We must be seen as people who will not
betray secrets and spread information beyond the circle of our
real friends. So our ambivalence does not mean that contempt
for gossip is hypocritical.
Adaptations for social exchange. Nothing is easier to under-
stand than situations of social exchange. That you will gain a
certain benefit (get a share of the meal) if you accept to pay a
certain cost (bring a bottle) is so natural that the subtle rea-
soning behind such situations seems self-evident. The infer-
ences are indeed automatic (if the meal is lavish and your bot-
tle less than respectable, people will not be that grateful) but
that is because the inference system is quite efficient. Social
exchange is certainly among the oldest of human behaviors, as
humans have depended on sharing and exchanging resources
for a very long time. Evolutionary psychologists Leda Cos-
mides and John Tooby pointed out that people become much
better at solving complex logical tasks if these are presented as
social exchange problems; it does not matter if the situation is
exotic. To check whether an imaginary tribe actually abides by
RELIGION EXPLAINED