Marcin Moroń’s study found that gossip and other forms of relational aggression were associated with a higher likelihood of being in a romantic relationship and having more children among 1,497 Polish adults. Published in Evolutionary Psychological Science, the work looks at whether a behavior often treated as social damage may also track with reproductive outcomes.
1,497 Polish adults in Poland
Moroń, a researcher at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Silesia in Poland, designed the study to test whether relational aggression offers quantifiable reproductive benefits in a contemporary society. He analyzed responses from adults in Poland aged eighteen to eighty-one, with an average age of about forty-eight and just over half of the sample made up of women.
Participants completed demographic surveys that asked about socioeconomic status, relationship status, and the number of biological children they had. That matters because the study used actual fertility data, not a proxy such as dating history or self-rated appeal, to examine whether more indirect social behavior tracked with reproductive outcomes.
Gossip, exclusion, and reproductive fitness
The survey split hostile behavior into two categories, and relational aggression included gossiping, withholding friendship, or manipulating others to isolate a rival. Evolutionary psychologists use the number of children as a measure of evolutionary fitness, so the study compared those behavioral patterns with a concrete outcome rather than a broad personality label.
The result cuts against the usual moral framing of gossip. Behaviors often viewed as undesirable, such as gossiping and exclusion, were the same behaviors described here as potentially linked to higher reproductive success. The study does not say that gossip causes more children; it shows an association in this Polish sample.
Evolutionary Psychological Science finding
Because the work appeared in Evolutionary Psychological Science, it sits inside a broader effort to connect psychological traits with reproductive outcomes. In practice, that means the finding is best read as a test of whether covert hostility may line up with life outcomes that evolution researchers track, not as a claim that people should imitate it.
What remains most important is the narrow scope of the evidence: 1,497 adults in Poland, a survey of relationship status and biological children, and a link between relational aggression and fertility-related measures. Why relational aggression was associated with higher fertility in this study was not explained, leaving the mechanism for future research rather than a settled answer.
