Negative gossip is a double-edged sword, which can harm group members but also protect them from harmful others. Current theory proposes that gossip receivers assess gossipers' selfish and prosocial ...intentions based on different social cues, to determine whether the negative gossip behavior is morally justifiable. However, assessing gossipers' moral intentions does not fully clarify when and how justifiability of negative gossip is assessed by receivers. Using goal framing theory, I propose a parsimonious way of understanding when gossip receivers will be interested in determining whether sharing the negative gossip was justifiable, and how they assess justifiability. In line with predictions, results of two scenario experiments showed that in a hedonic and gain goal frame gossip justifiability was similar to a baseline level, suggesting that receivers had no particular concerns regarding gossip justifiability. However, in a normative frame receivers assessed negative gossip to be less justifiable when social cues indicated that the gossiper was motivated to harm others for self-interest compared to when such cues were absent (Study 1). In Study 2, gossip was more justified when social cues indicated that that the target broke the salient social norm and signaled that the gossiper has low motivation to harm. Moreover, in a normative frame, participants were more interested in further establishing gossip truthfulness compared to participants in a gain, hedonic, or control condition in Study 1, and in a hedonic condition in Study 2. These results show that individuals' goal frame determine their interest in gossip justifiability and how they assess it. This may help solve the paradox of negative gossip by drawing from goal framing theory to understand individuals can be avid gossip consumers, while holding widely disapproving attitudes towards this behavior.
•Receivers assess justifiability of negative gossip based on their salient goal frame.•In a hedonic and gain goal frame gossip justifiability is high.•In a normative frame negative gossip justifiability is lower than in other frames.•In a normative frame justifiability is based on social cues of gossiper motives.
This article examines how employees use gossip as a resource to cope with social isolation. Building on a qualitative study with 32 truck drivers in a Western European company, our research ...identified gossip in close relationships and gossip in distant relationships as distinct patterns playing a different role in coping with social isolation, and a third pattern in which gossip was not beneficial. First, gossiping with close friends at work helped drivers engage in emotion-focused coping by reducing stress and loneliness. Second, gossiping with distant colleagues helped drivers engage in problem-focused coping by exchanging knowledge involving people in the organization. Third, gossip avoidance occurred in distant relationships, where drivers limited gossip exchanges going beyond instrumentally useful information. Overall, these findings show that drivers relied on different layers of their social network to cope with social isolation. Enriching previous research, this study shows that gossip represents an essential resource for emotion-focused and problem-focused coping.
Ample experimental evidence shows that negative gossip fosters cooperation in groups by increasing individuals’ reputational concerns. However, recent field studies showed that negative gossip ...decreases organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) among its targets (i.e., people whom gossip is about). Bridging these findings, we study the role of social inclusion in explaining how negative gossip affects targets’ engagement in OCB. Based on social exchange theory, we predict that targets of negative gossip experience low social inclusion. In turn, we propose that low social inclusion leads to low OCB of gossip targets. Results of three studies, a correlational study (N = 563), a laboratory experiment (N = 85), and an online scenario experiment (N = 597), showed that being the target of negative gossip reduced social inclusion and indirectly decreased OCBs. Our multi-method approach bridges findings from research conducted in organizations and in laboratory experiments and offers a more nuanced understanding of the effects of negative gossip on targets’ behavior. We show that due to its detrimental effect on targets’ social inclusion, negative gossip may not be as effective for enabling sustainable cooperation as experimental studies claim it to be.
How does being the target of negative supervisor gossip influence the functioning of targeted employees? We draw on feedback intervention theory to examine the beneficial and detrimental effects of ...negative supervisor gossip on targets’ feedback seeking behavior (FSB). Results from an online scenario study (N = 731) and a multi-wave field study (N = 249) showed that being the target of negative supervisor gossip led to high task reflexivity, which promoted FSB, but also led to high negative affect, which inhibited FSB. Furthermore, targets’ implicit theory of ability moderated the indirect relationships between negative supervisor gossip and FSB. Specifically, negative supervisor gossip stimulated task reflexivity and FSB especially when targets had a strong incremental theory. In contrast, negative supervisor gossip increased negative affect and stifled FSB especially when targets had a strong entity theory. Our findings indicate that negative supervisor gossip is a double-edged sword for targets’ engagement in FSB, thus providing a balanced view of its effects. We provide guidance for supervisors to better deliver and for employees to better receive different forms of feedback.
•Power relationships with interaction partners shape individuals’ gossip motives and gossip behavior.•In downward interactions gossip has relatively low functionality, and people avoid this type of ...communication.•Gossip is more likely and elaborate in lateral and upward interactions than in downward interactions.•Lateral gossip is functional in seeking information and social support from others.•Upward gossip is functional in exerting informal influence.
Gossip entails spreading evaluative information about people who are not present. From a social exchange perspective, we examined how hierarchical power relationships shape individuals’ gossip motives and behavior. Results of a laboratory experiment (Study 1) partially supported our prediction that gossip is less likely and elaborate in downward compared to upward and lateral interactions. We further predicted that people gossip laterally to seek information and social support, and upwards to exert influence. A scenario (Study 2) and critical incident study (Study 3) with working populations showed that lateral gossip was more functional for seeking information and expressive social support, whereas upward gossip (Study 2) and upward and lateral gossip (Study 3) were more functional for exerting informal influence and for seeking instrumental support. These results confirm our notion that gossip is functional behavior that enables individuals in hierarchical power relationships to strategically exchange different social resources (i.e., information, influence, support).
The omnipresence of workplace gossip makes understanding gossip processes imperative to understand social life in organizations. Although gossip research has recently increased across the social ...sciences, gossip is conceptualized in disparate ways in the scientific literature. This conceptual confusion impedes theoretical integration and providing practical advice. To resolve this, we systematically reviewed 6114 scientific articles on gossip and identified 324 articles that define gossip. From these definitions, we extracted two essential characteristics of gossip on which there seems to be agreement within the literature, namely, (1) that gossip is communication between humans involving a sender, a receiver, and a target, and (2) that the target is absent or unaware of the communicated content. These two characteristics formed the basis of a broad, integrative definition of gossip: a sender communicating to a receiver about a target who is absent or unaware of the content. Furthermore, some definitions include characteristics on which there is less agreement: gossip valence (from negative to neutral to positive) and formality (from informal to intermediate to formal). We incorporate these characteristics in a dimensional scaling framework that can guide future research. Our broad, integrative definition of gossip and the dimensional scaling framework provide the building blocks for a systematic, integrated knowledge base on the role of gossip in human social life in general as well as in organizations. This can foster future theory development and hypothesis testing, ultimately helping organizations to manage gossip.
Gossip, or informal talk about others who are not present, is omnipresent in daily interactions. As such, people who are targeted are likely to hear some gossip about themselves, which may have ...profound implications for their well-being. We investigated the emotions and behavioral intentions of people who hear performance-related gossip about themselves. Based on the affective events theory, we predicted that gossip incidents have strong emotional consequences for their targets and that these emotional responses trigger different behaviors. Two scenario studies (
= 226,
= 21.76;
= 204,
= 34.11) and a critical incident study (
= 240,
= 37.04) compared targets' responses to positive and negative gossip. Whereas, targets of positive gossip experienced positive self-conscious emotions (e.g., pride), targets of negative gossip experienced negative self-conscious emotions (e.g., guilt), especially when they had low core self-evaluations. In turn, these negative self-conscious emotions predicted repair intentions. Positive gossip also led to positive other-directed emotions (e.g., liking), which predicted intentions to affiliate with the gossiper. Negative gossip, however, also generated other-directed negative emotions (e.g., anger), especially for targets with high reputational concerns, which in turn predicted retaliation intentions against the gossiper. This pattern of emotional reactions to self-relevant gossip was found to be unique and different from emotional reactions to self-relevant feedback. These results show that gossip has self-evaluative and other-directed emotional consequences, which predict how people intend to behaviorally react after hearing gossip about themselves.
Exploring a prevalent yet under-researched phenomenon in organizations, we examine the effect of multi-source negative gossip (i.e., gossip from coworkers and supervisors) on targets’ strategic ...behavioral responses. Drawing on appraisal theory of emotion, we propose that negative gossip from coworkers and supervisors interactively affect targets’ anger and shame. These discrete emotions, in turn, lead to distinct strategic behavioral responses of gossip targets: social undermining and exemplification, respectively. In Study 1, we tested our hypotheses with a three-wave, time-lagged survey among 500 Chinese employees; in Study 2, we conducted a scenario experiment with 479 international employees. Supporting our theorizing, negative gossip from coworkers was associated with stronger feelings of anger when negative gossip from supervisors was lower (vs. higher), which led to social undermining of coworkers. Negative gossip from coworkers was associated with stronger feelings of shame when negative gossip from supervisors was higher (vs. lower), which led to exemplification of socially desirable behavior. Overall, investigating the phenomenon of multi-source gossip within organizations, we document emotional and behavioral responses of targets to multi-source negative gossip and discuss their theoretical and practical implications, as well as future avenues for research.
Based on social learning theory and regulatory focus theory, we propose that receiving positive and negative gossip from coworkers increases individuals’ vicarious learning, which subsequently ...improves their adaptive behaviours in the workplace, namely, increasing task performance and decreasing interpersonal deviance. Furthermore, we propose that gossip receivers’ regulatory foci determine the extent to which receivers engage in vicarious learning and change their behaviours. Results from two studies testing a moderated mediation model (Study 1: N = 214; Study 2: N = 189) showed that negative and positive gossip were indirectly related to increased receivers’ task performance and decreased interpersonal deviance through vicarious learning. The indirect effect of negative gossip was stronger for receivers with a high prevention focus, and the indirect effect of positive gossip was stronger for receivers with a high promotion focus. This research documents the beneficial role of receiving gossip from coworkers and advances our understanding of its consequences in the workplace.
Practitioner points
Managers should recognize gossip as a potentially effective channel for disseminating information, providing a valuable learning tool for the receivers, which they use according to their learning needs, as shaped by their regulatory focus.
Organizations could implement measures to share experiences and bolster employees’ vicarious learning through other means than gossip to mitigate potential negative effects of workplace gossip for the targets.
Managers should support higher transparency and access to information to facilitate learning and improve organizational effectiveness.
Tell Me the Gossip Martinescu, Elena; Janssen, Onne; Nijstad, Bernard A.
Personality & social psychology bulletin,
12/2014, Letnik:
40, Številka:
12
Journal Article
Recenzirano
We investigate the self-evaluative function of competence-related gossip for individuals who receive it. Using the Self-Concept Enhancing Tactician (SCENT) model, we propose that individuals use ...evaluative information about others (i.e., gossip) to improve, promote, and protect themselves. Results of a critical incident study and an experimental study showed that positive gossip had higher self-improvement value than negative gossip, whereas negative gossip had higher self-promotion value and raised higher self-protection concerns than positive gossip. Self-promotion mediated the relationship between gossip valence and pride, while self-protection mediated the relationship between gossip valence and fear, although the latter mediated relationship emerged for receivers with mastery goals rather than performance goals. These results suggest that gossip serves self-evaluative functions for gossip receivers and triggers self-conscious emotions.
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