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They believe strongly in not judging a book by its cover and prefer to keep an open mind when going into new situations and meeting new people. (2004), for instance, understand gossip as an extension of observational learning. In my 20-plus years of ministry, Ive noticed that people share prayer requests about others, more often than share requests about themselves. The Apostle Paul warned Timothy, pastor of the church at Ephesus, not to put young women on the widows list, because if they are on the list, they may learn to be lazy and will spend their time gossiping from house to house, meddling in other peoples business and talking about things they shouldnt. (1 Timothy 5:13). 26, 22882307. Not surprisingly, they were happier to hear positive gossip about themselves, and more irked by hearing negative gossip about themselves as opposed to hearing gossip about others.). Taken together, these studies and reviews illustrate that individuals scoring higher on the dark triad personality traits are willing to dismiss commonly accepted social norms and harm others for their own good. Schwarz, N., and Bless, H. (1992). Gossip frequently involves inconsequential topics such as a coworkers new hairstyle, weight reduction, weight gain, or a recent trip to Vegas. To arrive at this conclusion, researchers at the University of California Riverside analyzed daily conversations of 467 people over a multi-day period using an Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR, for short). Psychol. J. Appl. The German Version of the Revised Motives to Gossip Questionnaire In unserem privaten Alltag kommt es hufig vor, dass wir ber eine dritte Person sprechen, die nicht anwesend ist. Sex Roles 12, 281286. Diagnostica 61, 7691. Table 1. Spreading tales about a coworkers sex life, criminal background, suspected company policy infractions, or medical problems are all examples of harmful workplace gossip. NIum den Ruf der abwesenden Person zu schdigen. Dif. Most people agree: Saying negative things about others is OK, but do not say anything bad about me. Anton Hout, founder of OvercomeBullying.org, identifies these eight bully types: 1. Gossip isnt always as easy to spot as one might think. Gossiping is rewarded, so people will continue to gossip as long as they do not hear anything negative about themselves. doi: 10.1037/1089-2680.8.2.111, Beersma, B., and Van Kleef, G. A. All humans partake in some form, despite the age-old adage, If you have nothing nice to say, dont say anything at all. Whether its workplace chatter, the sharing of family news or group texts between friends, its inevitable that everyone who talks, well, talks about other people. 2023 LoveToKnow Media. . Also, individuals scoring high on narcissism show more indirect bullying than physical bullying (Baughman et al., 2012). In addition, we extended the questionnaire by widening the number of possible reasons including gossiping in order to foster relationship building and to gather social information. Thus, both kinds of analyses draw a very similar picture of the results emphasizing their reliability. Curiosity is an important character trait that can drive someone to want to know or learn new skills, information and abilities without being asked beforehand. doi: 10.1016/j.avb.2014.04.006, Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., and Dunbar, R. (2006). Rodrigues, C., Merz, M., Steininger, D., Beeser, C., and Terpelle-Winkelhusener, F. (2019). Giving (and getting) feedback is hard. This is inevitable. Interestingly, with regard to the dark triad personality traits, only narcissism shows consistent associations with motives to gossip. Your sister just got a tattoo thats going to make your parents flip out. Who among us hasnt felt the need to vent frustration, hurt, or anger? The DSM-5 lists nine key narcissistic traits: exaggerated feelings of superiority and self-importance. The act of gossiping, Feinberg explains, helps calm the body.. Thus, the bad reputation might also have a positive social function itself. Matthew Feinberg, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of Torontos Rotman School of Management, and his colleagues explored this in a 2012 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The present study revealed less consistent evidence for evaluative gossip and therefore did not support the notion that women evaluatively gossip more than men.". 19, 378394. Characteristics of gossips are: insecurity, jealous of others, low self esteem, angry at the world, have too much idle time on their hands, usually don't have any hobbies or activities they could be doing instead of rumor mongering, unhappy with their lives, don't like to see other people happy, attention seekers, like giving the illusion that Personal. J. Commun. New research published in the journal Social Psychology and Personality Science analyzed thousands of daily conversations to better understand the true nature of gossip. 56, 12131232. This way, to gain social comparison information minimizes the potential psychological cost. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0069996, Harvey, M. G., Heames, J. T., Richey, R. G., and Leonard, N. (2006). Mischel (1977) argued that behavior in strong situations is based on situational circumstances rather than on the individual's personality. It appears that we do not learn only about extraordinary experience made by others but also about more trivial things such as dressing style (De Backer et al., 2007). The inverse relationships between gossip, power, and likability. In the present study, we examined the differential importance of reasons to engage in gossip behavior. Mark Travers, Ph.D., is an American psychologist with degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder. Although laypeople often view gossipers as immoral, uneducated, typically female, and of lower social class, no systematic observation has empirically revealed the characteristics of those who gossip more than others nor examined the characteristics of gossip across everyday contexts. Such individuals are often in a state of depression and do not know how to enjoy life. Reputation, gossip, and human cooperation. Sci. The more narcissistic a person is, the more they tend to use gossip in order to validate information about others and also to gather information (at least in the work setting). Psychol. 22, 420. doi: 10.1037/a0019265, Jones, D. N., and Figueredo, A. J. When the dark ones gain power: perceived position power strengthens the effect of supervisor Machiavellianism on abusive supervision in work teams. Have We Turned Our Favorite Preachers and Teachers into Idols? Soc. The models predicting information validation (BF10 = 6.09), relationship building (BF10 = 25.36), and negative influence (BF10 = 123.43) show moderate to extreme evidence for the H1 indicating that the data are more likely under the model assuming associations between the three personality traits and the respective gossip motive than under the model assuming no association. (2012). The informal communication network: factors influencing grapevine activity. doi: 10.1108/13563280410551114, Michelson, G., Van Iterson, A., and Waddington, K. (2010). Not one person with firsthand knowledge ever contacted my husband. And although Gretchen Wieners is a mean girl, she is definitely very relatable. Thus, if individuals with dark personalities regularly use gossip to spread negative information and harm others that would surely contribute to the negative reputation of gossip. Interestingly, the motivation to negatively influence the reputation of somebody else is not solely associated with narcissism but also with Machiavellianism. Therefore, the present study aims to examine whether the bad reputation of gossip is justified by examining reasons to gossip. Whats so wrong with being a truth teller gossip? Regardless of important social functions, gossip has a rather negative reputation. Here we can assume rather strong situations. A couple of years younger than Daisy, Jordan is single and a professional golfer, which sets her apart from her married friend. The underlying motive is the same as all other forms of gossip: lack of love and respect for another human being. (2010). Natl. J. Pers. This motivation was apparent in the private setting as well as in the work setting suggesting that it might play a role in amicable relationship building as well as professional networking. Latent factors are allowed to correlate. The truth teller gossip doesnt consider their words are gossip. However, to fully understand the complex interplay between personality, gossip behavior and long term effects of gossip (i.e., social functions such as facilitation of relationship building, protection, facilitation of social learning) longitudinal studies are needed. Hearing information about others serves important social functions such as learning without direct interaction and observation. Health Organ. Self-reports: how the question shapes the answer. F-MH, CK, and MP contributed conception and design of the study and performed the statistical analysis. (2011). The data showed that nearly everyone in the study gossiped (only 34 individuals out of the 467 did not gossip at all). 12, 97110. Experiments his team have done suggest that the threat of being gossiped about deters untrustworthy behavior; once people have been gossiped about for behaving in an untrustworthy way, they tend to reform their behavior; and gossip helps people know who to avoid and not trust. doi: 10.1007/BF00287594, Lewis, D., and Gunn, R. (2007). Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage. doi: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2005.03.001, Noser, A. E., Zeigler-Hill, V., Vrabel, J. K., Besser, A., Ewing, T. D., and Southard, A. C. (2015). When we gossipno matter what the motivation or justificationwe behave just like the unbelieving world. (2015). Sci. She's so fetch. B., Neyer, F. J., and van Aken, M. (2013). Individ. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.1977.tb01812.x, Swann, W. B., Stephenson, B., and Pittman, T. S. (1981). Taken together, both classical linear regression and Bayesian linear regression show that the importance of motives mainly depends on the gossiper's narcissism. : a social network perspective on workplace gossip. It's hard for us to let it go when we see something as unfair. High-scorers in this attribute are dependable, reliable, organized and self-controlled. Public Opin. The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The dark triad personality traits were measured using the German version of the Dirty Dozen scale (DD, German version: Kfner et al., 2014; original version: Jonason and Webster, 2010). (2013). Baumeister et al. doi: 10.1177/1059601112450607, Farley, S. D. (2011). Another argument speaking against the assumption that an assimilation effect has occurred is the operation of conversational norms that prohibit redundancy. Nat. Ill never forget my seeking friends response when she first learned gossip is a sin: utter shock. doi: 10.1016/B978-012134645-4/50027-5. 25, 5876. As gossip is used by workplace bullies, and, therefore, considered as one aspect of workplace bullying (e.g., Lewis and Gunn, 2007; Crothers et al., 2009; Privitera and Campbell, 2009), the reasons for gossip as well as gossip frequency and valence might also depend on these organizational or occupational features. The repeated ANOVA was also calculated including gender as a between subject factor. People often exaggerate what they pass on to make a better or more coherent story or to justify why they are speaking about someone.. They prefer to do the least amount for the most gain, believing any and all. Crucially, they could inform their new groups how much someone had contributed in earlier exercises, and could vote to exclude someone who had behaved selfishly from a round entirely. You find out someone in your company is not a team player and you let other coworkers know so that they can try to avoid working with that colleague. Factor loadings of the items of the Motives to Gossip QuestionnaireRevised (confirmatory factor analysis) separately displayed for work and private setting (N = 134). Consistent with Beersma and Van Kleef (2012), we asked the participants to think about a past situation when they had a conversation with someone about an absent person. All other motives were equally important in private and work settings (p > 0.49; see Figure 2). Manag. Jonason, P. K., Lyons, M., Baughman, H. M., and Vernon, P. A. Thats not a responsible way of sharing information. Women engaged in more neutral gossip than men, but the amount of negative and positive gossip shared among men and among women was fairly consistent. Are you naturally inquisitive? Soc. In total, 100% of the students and the unemployed participant reported to have work experience. Thus, by passing reputational information about a potential harm-doer to a gossip partner, the group as a whole is protected against cheaters, free-riders and alike (Dunbar, 2004b; Keltner et al., 2008; Piazza and Bering, 2008; Beersma and Van Kleef, 2011; Feinberg et al., 2012, 2014). Simply put, your laughter spreads happiness and positive vibes. Bull. Even though the Dirty Dozen Scale has shown convergent validity with comprehensive measures, using more complex measures for the respective three traits would allow deeper insight into the associations. The receiver listens, then begins a response with, "Yes, and.". The Mauchly test effects for sphericity yielded significant effects for motives (2(14) = 52.73, p < 0.001) and for situation*motives (2(14) = 58.71, p < 0.001). (A coworker unfairly gets a promotion. Gaining social information and knowledge about people surrounding us provides us with a sense of control and advantage over others (e.g., Swann et al., 1981; Fiske, 2004). Anger. Celebrities: from teachers to friends. IV, Information Validation; IG, Information Gathering; RB, Relationship Building; P, Protection; SE, Social Enjoyment; NI, Negative Influence. Using gossip to build relationships was more often rated as relevant by individuals scoring higher on narcissism than by those scoring lower on narcissism both in work (p < 0.001) and private (p = 0.007) settings. IVum unsere Gedanken ber die abwesende Person zu vergleichen. However, when someone's typical behavior is to snap at people rather than communicating politely, then irritable is likely one of their personality traits.