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While gossiping is a behavior that has long been frowned upon, perhaps no one has frowned quite so intensely as the 16th- and 17th-century British. Back then, gossips, or “scolds” were sometimes forced to wear a menacing iron cage on their heads, called the “branks” or “scold’s bridle.” These masks purportedly had iron spikes or bits that went in the mouth and prevented the wearer from speaking. (And of course, of course, this ghastly punishment seems to have been mostly for women who were talking too much.)

Today, people who gossip are still not very well-liked, though we tend to resist the urge to cage their heads. Progress. And yet the reflexive distaste people feel for gossip and those who gossip in general is often nowhere to be found when people find themselves actually faced with a juicy morsel about someone they know. Social topics—personal relationships, likes and dislikes, anecdotes about social activities—made up about two-thirds of all conversations in analyses done by evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar. The remaining one-third of their time not spent talking about other people was devoted to discussing everything else: sports, music, politics, etc.

“Language in freely forming natural conversations is principally used for the exchange of social information,” Dunbar writes. “That such topics are so overwhelmingly important to us suggests that this is a primary function of language.” He even goes so far as to say: “Gossip is what makes human society as we know it possible.”

In recent years, research on the positive effects of gossip has proliferated. Rather than just a means to humiliate people and make them cry in the bathroom, gossip is now being considered by scientists as a way to learn about cultural norms, bond with others, promote cooperation, and even, as one recent study found, allow individuals to gauge their own success and social standing.

Dunbar’s theory is that as humans were fruitful and multiplied, we began to live in larger groups and it became hard to keep track of what everybody was up to just by observing them. And so, we needed language. Language allows us to know what other people have been doing, even if we weren’t there to witness it.

When a person chooses to share a story about someone else, it’s because they think that story is significant in some way. It might just be scandal or the thrill of some out-of-the-ordinary news. But researchers wrote in a 2004 study in the Review of General Psychology: “In many cases defamation of the target’s character is not the primary goal, and may even be irrelevant.”

A piece of gossip, they argue, is an opportunity to find out how someone did something right, or something wrong, and learn from the example. Learning how to live with others is something that continues throughout life—once you’ve learned not to eat paste, you can graduate to more nuanced lessons of human behavior.

As the study explains, “by hearing about the misadventures of others, we may not have to endure costs to ourselves,” by making the same mistake. And because negative stories tend to stick better in the mind than positive stories, it makes sense that gossip about people who violated norms would be more instructive than gossip about people who are really great at norms. (What’s more, one study found that sharing a negative opinion of a person with someone is better for bonding with them than sharing a positive opinion.)

And indeed, when study participants described what they took away from recent gossip they’d heard, “most of their answers took the form of generalizations that would be useful maxims for their own social life,” including: “Don’t fool around with random people,” “Just because someone says they have pictures of something doesn’t mean they do,” and “It just proves to me that fraternities are directly related to drinking.” Good lessons, all.

Of course, the norm-policing effects of gossip can be used for good or ill. Some norms are stupid. If you need an example, head to your local high school, hide yourself in one of the cafeteria trashcans, cover yourself with garbage, and eavesdrop for the duration of lunch hour.