First, the motives captured in the Motives to Gossip Questionnaire as well as in the extended version are based on a literature review, and, therefore, ultimately originate from the mind of researchers. And if the benefit of the favor to the other person outweighs the cost of doing the favor to you, then it should be done. Empirical findings have shown that people take the presumed motivation of a gossiper into account when judging the morality of the respective gossiper, for instance (Beersma and Van Kleef, 2012). Secondly, Dunbar (1998, 2004a) and Mesoudi et al. Social media is an ideal platform for gossip. I love my child-free life. 12, 177196. Thus, when focusing on gossipers' intentions, a rather positive picture of gossip is painted. The Bless Your Heart gossip shares juicy pieces of information, but tags on the line, bless his/her heart as a way of appearing compassionate and caring, when, in fact, they are neither compassionate nor caring. When we notice something unjust in the world, our natural instinct as a Libra is to want to correct it, to create balance and harmony. 40, 151192. In a second step, we did not look at the models containing all three personality traits but at the models reaching the highest BF10 (see Table 2; B: BF10). Donna and her husband planted Crossline Church in in Laguna Hills, CA, in 2005. In a 2019 meta-analysis published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, Robbins and a colleague found that, of the 52 minutes a day on average the 467 subjects spent gossiping, three-quarters of that gossip was actually neutral. Finally, he told me why: Ill eventually work out issues with people and move on, but if you know who they are, youre perception of them will forever be tainted.. When this happens in isolation, it doesn't reflect a personality trait. Examining these three categories separately, they found that younger people tended to gossip more negatively than older people. Psychol. Disunity. Dif. An in the know gossip loves to have the latest scoop. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. However, whereas individuals scoring high on narcissism appear to use gossip in a malicious way in private settings, individuals scoring high on Machiavellianism tend to bad-mouth others in professional settings. 1. The German version of the extended Motives to Gossip Questionnaire is displayed in the Appendix. PostedJune 24, 2021 Interpersonal chemistry through negativity: bonding by sharing negative attitudes about others. (2013). One might argue that this positive view on gossip arises due to data flawed by participants' tendency to socially desirable responding. Netw. In a first step, the BF10s of the models with narcissism, Machiavelliansim, and psychopathy as independent variables and the respective gossip motive as dependent variable were of interest (see Table 2; A: BF10). Excluding these participants from analysis did not change the results. The Dirty Dozen aims to capture the core aspects which are the grandiose self-view for narcissism, exploitation of others for Machiavellianism and the callousness for psychopathy (Kfner et al., 2014). To gossip or not to gossip: reactions to a perceived request to gossip a qualitative study. They often come across as too clingy. Photo courtesy: Thinkstock/Wavebreakmedia. doi: 10.1177/00187267035610003, Schafer, J. L., and Graham, J. W. (2002). Sometimes bitter-vengeful gossip is driven by jealousy. Magazines, Or create a free account to access more articles, The Science Behind Why People GossipAnd When It Can Be a Good Thing. He is bursting with a thirst for knowledge, inventiveness and creativity. Out of a Bad Heart Gossip arises when something has gone wrong with us at the worshiping core of our beings. Thus, the bad reputation might also have a positive social function itself. Screaming Mimis are loud and obnoxious, and their abusive behavior is meant to berate and humiliate people. CyberPsychol. 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. 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). The models tested the hypothesized six-factorial model with the six scales as correlated first-order factors with paths leading to the three items hypothesized to comprise that factor (see Figure 1). U.S.A. 104, 1743517440. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2014.09.016, Bosson, J. K., Johnson, A. Methods 7:147. doi: 10.1037/1082-989X.7.2.147, Schwarz, N. (1999). Informed consent was provided by ticking a box indicating comprehension of instruction and agreement that their data is used for scientific purposes. They also found that people with higher incomes tended to gossip more neutrally than people with lower incomes. This means, people instigate gossip to gather information and compare their ideas about others, to enjoy themselves, to spread negative information about a third person, and/or to protect the person they are talking with. A lot of gossip is driven by concern for others and has positive, social effects., Work from his group has also found that engaging in gossip can actually temper some of our frustrations and other negative emotions we feel when we find out someone has behaved in a deviant way. More specifically, it is easy to imagine that individuals scoring higher on the dark triad readily use gossip to negatively influence another person's reputation (i.e., potential competitor or rival) to push through self-beneficial agendas. To start, they report that just about everyone gossips a lot. After all, theyre just telling the truthor at least, what they think is true. Miss Emily Grierson. Soc. Heres how to make sure youre gossiping in a responsible, trustworthy way: Whether youre gossiping in a responsible way or not is all a matter of when youre doing it and with whom youre sharing the information, McAndrew says. A character must overcome these flaws in order to achieve their goals unless the story is a tragedy, and their character flaw is the cause of their downfall. php global variable not working in function / how to knit checkerboard pattern with two colors / personality traits of a gossip. So, keep on talking. Dif. These 5 Strategies Could Help, The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election. Table 2. Hence, to evaluate whether a certain behavior is good or bad, the underlying reasons or the intentions should be taken into account. 7. 85, 842860. 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. Thus, the positive social function view is not mirrored in the reputation of gossip and gossipers. Whats so wrong with being a truth teller gossip? Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar first pioneered this idea, comparing gossip to the grooming primates engage in as a means of bonding. However, at the same time the rich representations of these unusual events of gossip make it more plausible that participants have a vivid and detailed memory and can therefore recall related aspects such as motivations for behavior more easily (Tourangeau, 2000). doi: 10.3758/s13423-017-1343-3, Watson, D. C. (2011). Dif. The reason most often cited? In order to explore to what extent gossip motives can be generalized across situations, two different situations were incorporated in the study (i.e., private as well as workplace situations). Whereas, individuals scoring high on psychopathy and Machiavellianism pursue goals of a concrete, instrumental nature, individuals scoring high on narcissism aim for goals that are of an abstract, symbolic nature (Jones and Paulhus, 2011, p. 258). The standardized factor loadings for the six-factor model are presented separately in Figure 1 for both settings. (2015). Similarly, in the private setting, in 4 out of 6 analyses the BF10s are highest when the model includes only narcissism. Therefore, the present online study focuses on the reasons why people gossip and how these reasons are related to personality (i.e., dark triad) and situational settings. doi: 10.1007/BF00287594, Lewis, D., and Gunn, R. (2007). BF10 indicates the Bayes factor in favor of H1 over H0, that is, gives the likelihood of the data under the alternative hypothesis divided by the likelihood of the data under null hypothesis. Did you hear how much they paid for it? 27, 169184. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2012.00956.x, Behling, O., and Law, K. S. (2000). characteristics and dynamics of male gossip. I gossip, I'm judgemental, and I can be lazy. (2013). NIum schlecht ber die abwesende Person zu sprechen. How Psychologically Conditioned Rats Are Defusing Landmines, The Innate Intelligence Observed in the Dying Process. 78, 14. This approach might harbor potential threats. At first I pressed to know, claiming I couldnt really understand without every gritty detail. Narcissism and social networking web sites. 74, 275279. Group Organiz. Dif. 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). It's cowering in our jokes about the 'craziness' of our spouse. Gossip is an ubiquitous phenomenon. Psychol. 25, 3557. (2015). Group Organiz. 4. They call this type of gossip prosocial gossip because it serves to warn others which has the effect of lowering overall exploitation in groups, Willer says. Soc. Sex, power, and money: prediction from the Dark Triad and Honesty-Humility. Personal. IGum Informationen ber die abwesende Person zu sammeln. Importantly, even individuals that are willing to dismiss commonly accepted social norms, act selfishly, and harm others for their own good appear to use gossip to tune their picture of other humans and themselves and not to harm others. But he didnt budge: hed talk about problems, not people. The Dark Triad and motivations for gossip. 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. And indeed, research has shown that people give consideration to the fact that gossip differs and also gossipers differ from each other (Farley, 2011; Beersma and Van Kleef, 2012; Peters and Kashima, 2015). BF01 indicates the Bayes factor in favor of H0 over H1, that is, gives the likelihood of the data under the null hypothesis divided by the likelihood of the data under alternative hypothesis (Nuzzo, 2017; Halter, 2018; Wagenmakers et al., 2018b). J. Pum die Person, mit der ich gesprochen habe, vor dem Verhalten der abwesenden Person zu warnen. IVum herauszufinden, ob die Person, mit der ich gesprochen habe, meiner Meinung ist. 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). 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. People are comfortable in your presence and they see you as someone friendly and approachable. Bonferroni adjusted post-hoc analysis showed that social enjoyment was a more important motive in private situations than in work-related situations (private M = 3.08, SD = 1.84 vs. work M = 2.58, SD = 1.80; p < 0.001). Chuck Bass is an ESTP, who exhibits a lot of the unhealthy traits of this personality type. However, despite its important social functions, gossip has a rather negative reputation (Farley, 2011; Hartung and Renner, 2013; Peters and Kashima, 2013). Rev. 41, 18181833. A good gossiper is someone who people trust with information and someone who uses that information in a responsible way. When these traits are negative and hold a character back from their goal, theyre called character flaws. My friendwho is on the prayer teamreceived an email with churchwide prayers. Theres an intimacy to sharing experiences and feeling like youre on the same page about others, she points out. 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. doi: 10.1348/096317905X40817, Waddington, K., and Fletcher, C. (2005). The potentially more competitive professional setting elicited more malicious gossip only by people scoring high on Machiavellianism. Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons were two of Hollywood's favorite gossip columnists during the so-called Hollywood Golden Age, with film studios planting items to help publicize their stars and movies. The dislike for the target of the gossip is validated and justifies hurtful behavior. Individ. More specifically, respondents may deliberately ignore information that has already been provided in response to previous question (Schwarz and Bless, 1991; Schwarz et al., 1991; Schwarz, 1999). We asked them to think about the reasons they had for that conversation and to answer the Motives to Gossip Questionnaire-Revised accordingly. Scandals and the public's trust in politicians: assimilation and contrast effects. London: faber and faber. CK and MP organized the database. (2006) argues in his social gossip theory of language that human language evolved in order to keep track of complex social networks and to ensure the cohesion in large social groups. Have We Turned Our Favorite Preachers and Teachers into Idols? To have a personality trait, individuals must be somewhat consistent across situations in their behaviours related to the trait. In-depth interviews might uncover additional motives to exchange information about others. Personality traits reflect people's characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. 67, 1116. Front. Psychol. Internal consistency was highly satisfactory for all subscales (see Figure 1) and, if applicable, comparable to those of Beersma and Van Kleef (2012). Exchanging information with others might be an easy method to form new relationships and shape the social environment according to one's needs. Constructing Reality and Its Alternatives: An Inclusion/ Exclusion Model of Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Social Judgment (ZUMA-Arbeitsbericht, 1991/05). People want to be seen as being in the know when it comes to the latest gossip about others. 12, 183204. This unsolicited interference often manifests as questions and comments relating to our personal matters such as our health, career, and relationships. Neurosci. However, as more narcissistic individuals make more favorable impressions at first sight but not in the long run (Paulhus, 1998; Back et al., 2010), one might speculate that more narcissistic individuals have to keep friend-supplies coming. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. The most important motive was validating information about the gossip target followed by the motive to acquire new information about the gossip target. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. EAR is a portable device that continuously samples sound from a wearer's immediate environment. Pers. 2) Listen to what they have to say without acknowledging it. A less benign form of gossip is when people discuss information about celebrities or other people highlighted in tabloids or social media. Assimilation and contrast effects in part whole question sequences: a conversational logic analysis. A good gossiper is someone who people trust with information and someone who uses that information in a responsible way. Thus, an assimilation occurred in the first case whereas a contrast effect emerged in the second case. In addition, Feinbergs research has shown that gossip can promote cooperation by spreading important information. regular fantasies about personal power, intelligence, success, or attractiveness. But the study's authors say a sixth dimension, Honesty-Humility, should be . This type of gossip may think, my lifes uneventful, so lets talk about someone elses life. Gossip refers to the exchange of information about characteristics and behaviors of an absent person (Dunbar, 2004b; Foster, 2004; Peters and Kashima, 2015). In Judaism, there is a word for this: Loshon Hora. Fiske, S. T. (2004). In other words, people without anything to do will eventually start talking about you. This holds true in two fundamental domains of life, namely the private and the work context. One might speculate that the positive social functions of gossip depend on a moderate use of gossip be it with regard to the amount or the valence of gossip. Consequently, participants might have selected highly salient examples of gossip events that are not representative of more frequent gossip sessions. Noticeably, the results revealed that the importance of motives mainly depends on the gossiper's narcissism both in work settings and in private settings. doi: 10.1177/1059601109360389. 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. Narcissism on facebook: self-promotional and anti-social behavior. When someone always tells the truth, honesty is one of their personality traits. All rights reserved. (2015). To fill this void, there is nothing else he can find worth doing apart from yapping and gossiping about other people with the ultimate aim of gaining favours from those he is spreading gossip to. This is inevitable. In such a scenario, youre not learning anything, Robbins adds. However, the model that receives most support was the model containing the motives factor only (BF10 = 4.48 1082). Megan Robbins, Assistant Professor of Psychology at UC, Riverside. Manag. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, Digital Subsequent conversations center on negative evaluations of that person. This might be due to similar gossip behavior across different situations or due to the fact that the distinction between work and private situations has not been precise enough. Old Medication, New Use: Can Prazosin Curb Drinking? doi: 10.1177/147470491201000303, Jonason, P. K., Slomski, S., and Partyka, J. Second, only share a non-personal prayer request if the other person has given you permission to share their need. Focusing on one of these dimensions of gossip might change the evaluation and emphasize the negative reputation of gossip. Leadership Organiz. But researchers often define it more broadly: as talking about people who arent present, says Megan Robbins, an assistant professor of psychology at The University of California, Riverside. Personality traits reflect people's characteristic patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. 34, 193205. That means, when broadening the view and evaluating gossip not only with regard to social functions but also with regard the intention of the gossiper a positive impression of gossip emerges. Curiosity and control: on the determinants of the search for social knowledge. The inter-factor correlations varied in between r = 0.10 and 0.61 for the work setting and between r = 0.17 and 0.43 for the private setting. Interestingly, the importance of motives mainly depends on the gossiper's narcissism both in work and in private settings. Simply put, your laughter spreads happiness and positive vibes. Bull. It is OK to talk negatively about others, but do not say anything bad about me.
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