Most people feel guilty after gossiping about a friend or colleague.

多数人总会在聊完朋友或同事八卦后感到愧疚。

But scientists have found that crafty chats - dubbed ‘gossip theory’ - are what makes us human, and may even help us live longer.

但科学家发现，正是这些狡诈的闲聊——称之为“八卦理论”——成为人类独有特点，甚至有可能延长寿命。

Gossip is what sets our species apart, as it helps us bonds with friends and learn important information about who to trust.

我们因谈论不同八卦分成不同的小群体，这有助于我们与朋友团结一致，并从这些信息中判断谁值得信任。

And it’s this vital communication that could prevent us from dying, something Robin Dunbar, professor of evolutionary psychology at Oxford University, believes is the ‘most important thing’ to keep us alive.

牛津大学进化心理学教授罗宾•邓巴称，正是这种交流可以防止我们死去，他坚信这是使我们保持生命力的“最重要的因素”。

Prof Dunbar told the Telegraph: ‘That has a bigger effect than anything, except giving up cigarettes.

邓巴教授对英国《电讯报》说：“除了戒烟，这便是延长生命的最有效方式。

‘Your social network has a huge effect on happiness and well-being.

你的社交网极大地影响着你的幸福与健康。

‘The problem we have is how to maintain our social networks. Language evolved to allow us to keep the oil of the social network flowing, keep us up to date, and tell stories, which is really important for community cohesion.

我们面临的问题是如何维护我们的社交网。语言的进化演变，使我们能够保持社交网不中断，实时更新消息，说故事，而这些对于社区凝聚力十分重要。

‘Gossiping is just chatting with people and keeping up to date with the social world in which you live. So gossip is what makes us human.

八卦只不过是与人闲聊，随时了解社交环境的最新资讯。这是人类的特性。

‘The use of gossip in a negative sense is not seen until the 18th century.’

直到18世纪，八卦的消极影响才开始出现。

The idea is that as language developed it let humans communicate better and made them more likely to pass on useful information, allowing them to live in larger groups.

语言的进化使人类沟通更顺利，互相传递有用信息的机会增多，因而能够融入更大的群体中。”

Yuval Noah Harari, a history professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told the paper: ‘The new linguistic skills that modern humans acquired about 70 millennia ago enabled them to gossip for hours on end.

耶路撒冷希伯来大学历史学教授尤瓦尔•诺亚•哈拉里表示：“7万年前，现代人类拥有的新语言技能使他们能够连续几个小时不断地闲聊。

‘Reliable information about who could be trusted meant that small bands could expand into larger bands.

知道谁值得信任这一可靠信息就意味着小团体可以扩充成大团体。

‘Even today the vast majority of human communication, whether in the form of emails, phone calls or newspaper columns is gossip.

即便当下，人类沟通的主要内容，无论是通过邮件，电话或新闻专栏，都是八卦。

‘It comes so naturally, that it seems as if our language evolved for this very purpose.’

这些都十分自然而然地发生，似乎语言就是专门为了这个目的而进化。”

He added that ‘rumour-mongers’ were in fact the first journalists, helping inform others about who to avoid and who to trust.

他还补充道，实际上，“谣言传播者”正是第一批新闻记者，告知其他人应避开何人，相信何人。