1. American boys and girls gossip the same amount – but they do it for different reasons and talk about slightly different things , a University of Michigan study found.
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2. It found that pre-teens gossip an average of 18 times an hour , devoting as much as 50 percent of their time to it.
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3. Girls aged 9 to 12 were more likely to talk about boys they had crushes on or boys other girls liked, said psychologist Jeffrey Parker.
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4. Boys rarely talked about the specific girls they liked, although they still talked about girls in general terms.
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5. The study defined gossip as any “evaluative talk” about a person who was not in the room.