Here is an awkwardly funny question ''Does gossiping have health benefits?", well let's see what science has to offer.........

Have you ever felt a little guilty every time you indulged in gossiping with your friends? Well, according to a new study, gossiping can actually be healthy!

The act of keeping a secret exerts not only an emotional toll, but also physical damage, shows the study. Keeping a secret is similar to carrying physical weight which can sap you of your energy.

‘Being preoccupied by a secret at work can be demotivating,’ said Michael Slepian, assistant professor of negotiations at Columbia Business School, New York City and co-author of the study.

The burden of secrecy can make things around you appear more challenging and if you’re less motivated to tackle these challenges, your performance can suffer

A secret can preoccupy your mind and the more you think about it, the more you use personal, intellectual and motivational resources, Daily Mail reported.

For the study, scientists carried out a series of experiments to assess the effect secrets had on a subject’s ability to judge the steepness of a hill.

Contrary to the assumption that women can’t wait to disclose the secret, it is men who are first to spill the beans. Thanks to social media, men no longer wait to see their mates in the pub and typically share a secret within three hours.

While almost half of men admit to passing on the information within minutes of first being told about it, women will keep it to themselves for at least three and a half hours before passing it on.

‘This is the same kind of outcome we see when people are carrying physical burdens, seeing the world as more challenging, forbidding and extreme,’ Slepian pointed out.

How positive gossip can help people improve themselves:

Why are people interested in listening to gossip about others’ achievements and failures? To promote self-reflection and growth.

According to a study, listening to gossip may actually help individuals adapt to a particular social environment.

For the study, the team asked participants to recall an incident where they received either positive or negative gossip about another individual.

Participants were then asked questions to measure the self-improvement, self-promotion and self-protection value of the gossip.

‘For example, hearing positive stories about others may be informative because they suggest ways to improve oneself,’ explained lead researcher Elena Martinescu from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.

On the other hand, women who receive negative gossip experience higher self-protection concerns, possibly because they believe they might experience a similar fate as the person being the target of the gossip.

Men who receive positive gossip experience fear because upward social comparisons with competitors are threatening, researchers found.

Hearing negative gossip may be flattering because it suggests that others may not function as well as we do.

‘However, negative gossip may also be threatening to the self because it suggests a malign social environment in which one may easily fall victim to negative treatments,’ Martinescu added.

Researchers also found that individuals with a mastery goal are more likely to learn from positive gossip than individuals with a performance goal. The latter experience a concern for self-protection in response to positive gossip.