Empirical research has already shown that gossip activity at the workplace depends on variables such as trust in management (Ellwardt et al., 2012c), psychological contract violations (Kuo et al., 2015), leadership (Kuo et al., 2015), ambiguity of formal communication within organizations (Crampton et al., 1998), and perceived stress and anxiety (Waddington and Fletcher, 2005). Psychol. 12, 183204. 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. To measure reasons to gossip the English version of Motives to Gossip Questionnaire (Beersma and Van Kleef, 2012) was translated into German using the parallel blind technique (Behling and Law, 2000). Gen. Psychol. Gossip typically centers on the negative aspects of a person's personal appearance, personal achievements, or personal behaviors. doi: 10.1016/j.avb.2014.04.006, Mesoudi, A., Whiten, A., and Dunbar, R. (2006). They also dispelled another common misconceptionthat poorer, less educated people engage in gossip more than the affluent. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2013.12.026. Bullying: from the playground to the boardroom. They often come across as too clingy. Even though the received information makes one stack up badly against the social environment, it might be less painful because it does not happen in the public eye. Schwarz, N., and Bless, H. (1992). (2015). In support of that notion, the social enjoyment motive is less important in the professional setting than in the private setting. Chuck Bass is an ESTP, who exhibits a lot of the unhealthy traits of this personality type. The sword of a woman: gossip and female aggression. (2013). Validating and gathering information were the most important motives in the private and the work context. Also, the p-value in classical analysis provides the information about the probability of obtaining results as least as extreme as those observed given that the null hypothesis is true; the alternative hypothesis is left unspecified (Wagenmakers et al., 2018b). And when your conversation turns to gossip, as it inevitably will, remember that some good can come of it with the right intentions, of course. The findings suggest that the negative reputation of gossip is not justified. Likewise, individuals might use gossip in order to negatively influence the reputation of a target person, and, without intention, simultaneously serve the social function of group protection. Lying. what are the non legislative powers of congress. Do loose lips sink ships? From an anthropological perspective, it has been argued that human language primarily evolved to exchange social information in order to deal with complex social situations (Dunbar, 1998, 2004a; Barrett et al., 2002), and that we, therefore, preferentially attend to social information (e.g., Mesoudi et al., 2006). Finally, in the present paper, concurrent associations between personality and reasons to gossip were studied. Not one person with firsthand knowledge ever contacted my husband. 37, 519547. (2004b). doi: 10.1177/1059601109360391. When they are the first to volunteer their time, you can remark on their generosity. 34, 193205. characteristics and dynamics of male gossip. Perhaps most interesting, however, is what the researchers didn't find. To start, they report that just about everyone gossips a lot. Welche Motive Fhren zu Gossip und Welche Emotionen Begleiten uns Dabei und Resultieren Daraus? Thousand Oakes, CA: Sage. *Correspondence: Freda-Marie Hartung, freda-marie.hartung@hsrw.eu, Why People Gossip and What It Brings About: Motives For, and Consequences Of, Informal Evaluative Information Exchange, View all Biblically, a gossip is defined as "a tale-bearer, a whisperer, a secret slanderer." Anytime we say anything about someone privately that we wouldn't say publicly, it's gossip. Gossip isn't. (2012). Regardless of important social functions, gossip has a rather negative reputation. In contrast, the motives factor receives extreme support. Pers. 99, 122126. If knowledge is power, gossip is turbocharged power. Those who were asked to rate the trustworthiness of politicians in general afterwards rated the trustworthiness lower than those who were asked to rate the trustworthiness of specific politicians. Accordingly, two thirds of adult conversations in public settings involve gossip (e.g., Levin and Arluke, 1985; Dunbar et al., 1997). People whose lives lack meaningful work or transcendent purpose, often seek to find significance by discussing the lives of others. 7. We care about fairness. The dirty dozen: a concise measure of the dark triad. For instance, gossiping just for fun might serve a recreational function, and, at the same time, create trust and closeness facilitating relationship building. Bull. The I need to get a life gossip is driven by boredom or emptiness. 28, 16101619. In Judaism, there is a word for this: Loshon Hora. How perceptions of gossiper morality are related to gossip content. They're experts at laying guilt trips. Peters, K., and Kashima, Y. You feel violated and resentful. J. Exp. Psychol. Other research shows that in comparison to more psychopathic and more Machiavellian individuals, more narcissistic individuals tend to use more soft tactics to influence others (Jonason et al., 2012). In my 20-plus years of ministry, Ive noticed that people share prayer requests about others, more often than share requests about themselves. Gossip. Rather, negatively influencing the reputation of others is the least important reason to gossip. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2011.11.020, Baughman, H. M., Jonason, P. K., Lyons, M., and Vernon, P. A. Therefore, due to parsimonious reasons, we only report the results not controlling for gender. People who heard either positive or negative gossip about themselves showed more activity in the prefrontal cortex of their brains, which helps people navigate complex social behaviors. Six distinct reasons have been identified that underlie gossip behavior: information validation, information gathering, relationship building, protection, social enjoyment, and negative influence. Other people's guilt is a manipulator's best friend. J. Occup. doi: 10.1089/cpb.2009.0025. It was kind of boring, Robbins says, not salacious and negative at all. 35, 371390. To address the issue of sample size, the analyses were repeated using Bayesian statistics (e.g., van de Schoot et al., 2013). Psychologists have traditionally looked to the "Big Five" personality traits -- which consist of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience -- as a means of taking a thorough assessment of a person's attitudes and behaviors. While listening to patients, psychologists must also guide the therapy process with their own questions. Valuing myself over others: the Dark Triad traits and moral and social values. The standardized factor loadings for the six-factor model are presented separately in Figure 1 for both settings. The data showed that nearly everyone in the study gossiped (only 34 individuals out of the 467 did not gossip at all). In order to get more insight into our results, we additionally conducted a Bayesian Repeated ANOVA and Bayesian Regression Analyses. They also found that people high in the personality traits of extraversion and agreeableness tended to gossip more than others. Personality traits imply consistency and stabilitysomeone who scores high on a specific trait like Extraversion is expected to be sociable in different situations and over time. doi: 10.1348/000712605X85871, Michelson, G., and Mouly, V. S. (2004). Pers. Suls, J. M. (1977). doi: 10.1007/BF00287594, Lewis, D., and Gunn, R. (2007). doi: 10.1177/0146167208320061, Carpenter, C. J. 18, 334354. To have a personality trait, individuals must be somewhat consistent across situations in their behaviours related to the trait. doi: 10.1007/s12110-007-9023-z, Deutchman, P., and Sullivan, J. The interaction of person and situation, in Personality at the Crossroads: Current Issues in Interactional Psychology, eds D. Magnusson and N. S. Endler (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.), 333352. A competitive situation might elicit motives that serve the individual more easily and hazards negative consequences for others. However, men and women differ significantly with regard to psychopathy (women M = 2.50, SD = 1.58 vs. men M = 3.08, SD = 1.73; t(132) = 2.01, p = 0.05, Cohen's d = 0.35). Read: That urge to share a juicy piece of news when you hear it is part of who we are and a natural characteristic of the species weve become. J. Pers. According to Wagenmakers et al. By definition (at least the definition social scientists who study gossip use), gossip is any talk about someone who isnt present, its usually about something we can make a moral judgment about (meaning you tend to approve of the information or disapprove), and its entertaining (meaning it doesnt feel like work to do it; you tend to want to share or hear the information), McAndrew explains. Jonason and Schmitt (2012) argued that being surrounded by a lot of (potential) friends is a way to satisfy the continuous need for self-validation; likewise, it may serve the need for external self-affirmation and appreciationyou need audience when you want to shine on stage (Morf and Rhodewalt, 2001). Peng et al. Divide the group into smaller groups of three. To distinguish between information gathering and information validation, three new items were generated to capture information gathering; three items of the information gathering and validation subscale were chosen to represent information validation. What makes the prayer request gossip so insidious is that gossip is couched in spiritual sounding words like, we all need to pray for him.. Dif. If anything, the results suggest the opposite. In order to gain more knowledge about the effects of situational attributes on gossip motives, frequency, and valence future research should use experimental design or intensive longitudinal methods (i.e., diary and experience sampling). A coworker took all the credit for a project you both worked on in a meeting with your boss. 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). Pers. Das Dreckige Dutzend und die Niedertrchtigen Neun. I can see why she got the promotion. gossip with humour and laughter is the 'best' kind of gossip, in the sense that it is merely orientated to entertainment and thus it is free of 'pettiness' and 'viciousness', because it is incompatible with strong negative emotions: 'People cannot anger us or make us indignant, for instance, at the same time as they make us laugh. 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). Reputation, gossip, and human cooperation. Thus, even individuals with dark personalities rarely use gossip with a negative intention, underlining the positivity of gossip. 1. Dear friends, never take revenge. Positive gossip. 12, 97110. Psychol. The study conforms with the Declaration of Helsinki and the ethics guidelines of the German Psychological Society. Foster, E. K. (2004). 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). They'll find a way to cultivate it, so they can use it to get what they want from you. 12, 395400. Whats so wrong with being a truth teller gossip? People will ask you for favors in life. The models predicting information gathering (BF10 = 0.35), protection (BF10 = 0.03), and social enjoyment (BF10 = 0.73) show anecdotal to very strong evidence for the H0 indicating that the data are more likely under the model that assumes no relationship than under the model including the three personality traits. The motive to warn and protect a conversational partner appears to be of similar importance as relationship building and enjoyment. Baumeister et al. doi: 10.1177/0146167208316688, Furnham, A., Richards, S. C., and Paulhus, D. L. (2013). Miss Emily Grierson Character Analysis. Contrary to that perspective, gossip is considered as a form of passive-aggressive form of workplace bullying in work and organizational literature (e.g., Lewis and Gunn, 2007; Crothers et al., 2009; Privitera and Campbell, 2009). For snowball sampling they were asked to distribute the link to colleagues and other employees. Sometimes jealous gossip stems from wanting to be right, or best, or number one. (2010). But it gets more interesting from there. 27, 569584. The results are displayed in Table 2. 27, 164168. Whats wrong with bitter-vengeful gossip? Leave that to the righteous anger of God. Whereas, in private settings this motive appears to be more important for individuals scoring higher on narcissism than for those scoring lower on narcissism (p = 0.03), in work settings it appears to be more important for individuals scoring higher on Machiavellianism than for those scoring lower on Machiavellianism (p = 0.006). Necessary, even? Leadership Organiz. Pers. Psychol. Philosopher Immanuel Kant believed if everyone lied, nobody would believe anything they were told! When they were able to actively gossip about the person, or the situation, on the other hand, it soothed them and brought their heart rates down. Fifteen percent of gossip is negative while the remaining 10% is positive or flattering. Psychol. To examine whether the importance of motives depends on the gossiper's personality, multiple regression analyses were conducted for both work and private situations. Using diaries to explore the characteristics of work-related gossip: methodological considerations from exploratory multimethod research.
When Psychopaths Get Married, Lab Thermal Energy Transfer Assignment: Reflect On The Lab, Articles P