Psychol. Psychol. Most start with the same basic idea: Gossip is a conversation between two people that concerns a third person who is not present. 2. Rodrigues, C., Merz, M., Steininger, D., Beeser, C., and Terpelle-Winkelhusener, F. (2019). doi: 10.3758/s13423-017-1323-7, Wagenmakers, E. J., Marsman, M., Jamil, T., Ly, A., Verhagen, J., Love, J., et al. They always look at the negative sides of life and find extremely difficult to cope up with stress. High-scorers in this attribute are dependable, reliable, organized and self-controlled. doi: 10.1002/per.1860, Levin, J., and Arluke, A. Thinking About Answers: The Application of Cognitive Processes to Survey Methodology. Extroversion. Correlations between all scales (N = 134). It's like one caveman beating up another caveman for control of the tribe-only it's done with cruel whispers and petty remarks instead of fists. The researchers coded gossip into three distinct categories: positive/flattering gossip, neutral gossip (i.e., observations about people that aren't necessarily positive or negative), and negative/malicious gossip. However, correlations are not displayed due to clarity reasons. Gossip refers to the exchange of information about characteristics and behaviors of an absent person (Dunbar, 2004b; Foster, 2004; Peters and Kashima, 2015). Why Do We Need to Be Crucified with Christ? 8, 111120. 10. In order to display their power and reinforce their egos, people must share the information with other individuals. 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. doi: 10.1002/9781118001868.ch15, Keltner, D., Van Kleef, G. A., Chen, S., and Kraus, M. W. (2008). Soc. Students with large appetites for success tend to have low tolerances for failure and might be unfair to themselves when they don't perform as well as they would like to. In line with that notion, research shows that individuals who show a high frequency of negative gossip are rated as highly dislikable (Farley, 2011). Public Adm. 85, 641665. The German version of the extended Motives to Gossip Questionnaire is displayed in the Appendix. In order to gossip, you need to feel close to people, says Stacy Torres, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, San Francisco, who has studied gossip in older adults. When someone always tells the truth, honesty is one of their personality traits. This reaction also occurred when the participants heard negative gossip in general. Here we can assume rather strong situations. Encourage them to find a healthy balance between pushing themselves and making mistakes. (New York, NY: McGraw-Hill) 680740. Thus, an assimilation occurred in the first case whereas a contrast effect emerged in the second case. In a 2015 study published in Social Neuroscience, scientists looked at brain imaging of men and women as they heard positive and negative gossip about themselves, their best friends and celebrities. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2012.00956.x, Behling, O., and Law, K. S. (2000). Needless to say, it created a relational mess. 35, 371390. doi: 10.1111/j.1475-6811.2006.00109.x, Buffardi, L. E., and Campbell, W. K. (2008). Gossiping just for fun and to pass time appears to be as important as relationship building and protecting others from harm. Predictably, the study showed that people felt happier when they heard positive gossip about themselves and felt more agitated when they heard negative gossip about themselves. Thats because were human beings and sharing information about one another is part of what we do, explains Frank T. McAndrew, Ph.D., the Cornelia H. Dudley Professor of Psychology at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois: Everyone gossips.. More specifically, it has been suggested and empirically shown that, at the dyadic level, sharing gossip is associated with friendship (Grosser et al., 2010; Watson, 2011; Ellwardt et al., 2012b) and even leads to the development of friendships (Ellwardt et al., 2012b; see also Bosson et al., 2006). Personal. Gossiping gives people a sense of power. Its harmful because without firsthand knowledge, those who are in a position to intervene in dangerous or destructive situations are unable to do so in a timely manner. The dark triad and framing effects predict selfish behavior in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma. Taken together, the BF10s in the work setting showed that in 5 out of 6 analyses the BF10s are highest when the models include only narcissism. Identifying an individual's personality style is not an easy task. Another way to explore whether the reputation of gossip is justified is to examine the gossip reasons of individuals scoring high on narcissism, Machiavellianism and psychopathy. Previous Next . 16:293. doi: 10.1037/a0020773, Wisse, B., and Sleebos, E. (2016). One subject for example, spoke about someone who was watching a lot of movies to stay current. To address the issue of sample size, the analyses were repeated using Bayesian statistics (e.g., van de Schoot et al., 2013). Gossip in organizations: contexts, consequences, and controversies. 25, 656664. Curiously, very few research exists on simply asking people about the reasons why they gossip (Beersma and Van Kleef, 2012). 27, 169184. Unpacking evil: claiming the core of the Dark Triad. 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). While personality traits describe real people, character traits describe fictional characters. IVum herauszufinden ob die Person, mit der ich gesprochen habe, genauso ber die abwesende Person denkt. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. Social Neuroscience, 10, 320-336. Donna and her husband planted Crossline Church in in Laguna Hills, CA, in 2005. doi: 10.1348/000712605X85871, Michelson, G., and Mouly, V. S. (2004). 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. Cliques, rumors, and gossip by the water cooler: female bullying in the workplace. 40, 16681680. And, even though the motives to gossip depend on the gossiper's personality (i.e., dark triad personality), also individuals with dark personalities appear to use gossip to tune their picture of other humans and themselves. Psychol. 22, 420. doi: 10.1037/a0019265, Jones, D. N., and Figueredo, A. J. A pastors wife and national speaker, Donna Jones travels from coast to coast, guiding women to the wisdom they need, for the life they want. The standardized factor loadings for the six-factor model are presented separately in Figure 1 for both settings. Biblically, a gossip is defined as a tale-bearer, a whisperer, a secret slanderer. Anytime we say anything about someone privately that we wouldnt say publicly, its gossip. doi: 10.1080/10887150902886423, De Backer, C. J., Nelissen, M., Vyncke, P., Braeckman, J., and Mcandrew, F. T. (2007). In addition, we examine the reasons of individuals scoring high on the dark triad personality traits (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) as they are known to ignore commonly accepted norms and to act selfishly (e.g., OBoyle et al., 2012; Muris et al., 2017). A bad gossiper, on the other hand, is someone who shares information about others in order to get ahead or get an advantage themselves, or just plain recklessly. Sex Roles 12, 281286. 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). Contemp. Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. Gossip differs from the human tendency to talk about other people in that gossip tends to focus on negative information to demean the target. Behav. doi: 10.1177/1059601109360389. Its just social information and we learn a lot about the social world around us when we gossip., What makes gossip good, bad or neutral is how we use the information, not the content of the news itself, McAndrew says. However, we can take some cues from these fictional people and their character traits in order to achieve our own goals. These three traits are summarized under the umbrella term dark triad and gained considerable attention in the past years (Jones and Paulhus, 2011; OBoyle et al., 2012; Furnham et al., 2013; Jones and Figueredo, 2013; Lee et al., 2013; Book et al., 2015; Muris et al., 2017). I gossip, I'm judgemental, and I can be lazy. (2015) also found that the caudate nucleus, the reward center in the brain, activated in response to negative gossip about celebrities, which demonstrates how salacious celebrity scandals pique peoples interest. Bad habit or social good? Some scholars view gossip as evidence of cultural learning, offering teachable moments and providing people examples of whats socially acceptable and whats not. The repeated ANOVA was also calculated including gender as a between subject factor. Also, it is likely that work and private setting differ on a competitiveness-cooperativeness dimension. He's not afraid to say "no". No one is benefiting., Theres also a physiological distinction to be drawn between active and passive participation in gossip. Differentiating the Dark Triad within the interpersonal Curcumplex, in Handbook of Interpersonal Psychology: Theory, Research, Assessment and Therapeutic Interventions, eds L. M. Horowitz and S. Strack (New York, NY: Wiley and Sons), 249269. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2014.06.038, Jonason, P. K., and Schmitt, D. P. (2012). Sometimes jealous gossip stems from wanting to be right, or best, or number one. Bivariate correlations between all variables are displayed in Table 1. This type of gossip may think, my lifes uneventful, so lets talk about someone elses life. (2014). In line with that notion, they were able to show that individuals scoring high on narcissism are not choosy when selecting friends. Gossip as cultural learning. doi: 10.1007/BF02912493, Eckhaus, E., and Ben-Hador, B. Excluding these participants from analysis did not change the results. Hum. More specifically, the BF compares two competing models: Null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis (Wagenmakers et al., 2018b). Hearing information about others serves important social functions such as learning without direct interaction and observation. Psychol. A personality trait describes how a person tends to think, feel, and behave on an ongoing basis. However, when using the more conservative Greenhouse-Geisser corrected statistics, the ANOVA yielded no significant interaction effect, F(4.15, 665) = 2.29, p = 0.06, P2 = 0.02. In accordance with the national and institutional guidelines, ethical approval was not required for this study. Social curiosity and gossip: Related but different drives of social functioning. Six distinct motives were identified that underlie gossip behavior: information validation, information gathering, relationship building, protection, social enjoyment, and negative influence. Extroverts are social, assertive, socially confident and love interacting with people..