Much information people receive about others reaches them via gossip. But is this gossip trustworthy? We examined this in a scenario study (Nsenders = 350, Nobservations = 700) and an interactive ...laboratory experiment (Nsenders = 126; Nobservations = 3024). In both studies, participants played a sequential prisoner’s dilemma where a gossip sender observed a target’s (first decider’s) decision and could gossip about this to a receiver (second decider). We manipulated the interdependence structure such that gossipers’ outcomes were equal to targets’ outcomes, equal to receivers’ outcomes, or independent. Compared to no interdependence, gossip was more often false when gossipers were interdependent with targets but not when interdependent with receivers. As such, false positive gossip (self-serving when interdependent with targets) increased but false negative gossip (self-serving when interdependent with receivers) did not. In conclusion, the interdependence structure affected gossip’s trustworthiness: When gossipers’ outcomes were interdependent with targets, gossip was less trustworthy.
Purpose
The crucial role of knowledge sharing in an organization has become even more crucial lately, resulting in garnering more attention by scholars. In reality, while several organizations expect ...their employees to share knowledge with colleagues actively, many choose to hide their knowledge when asked for help. This study aims to explore whether negative workplace gossip (NWG) affects employee knowledge hiding (KH), as well as analyzes whether relational identification (RI) and interpersonal trust (IT) play a chain mediating role between the two, and discusses whether forgiveness climate (FC) could be used as a boundary condition in the relationships mentioned above.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the conservation of resource (COR) theory and the cognitive–affective personality system (CAPS) theory, the authors surveyed 326 employees in China at 2 time-points and explored the correlation between NWG and KH, as well as the underlying mechanism. Using confirmatory factor analysis, bootstrapping method and structural equation model, the authors validated the research hypotheses.
Findings
The findings revealed the following: NWG negatively correlates with KH; RI and IT play a mediation role between NWG and KH, respectively, and both variables also play a chain mediation role in the relationship mentioned above; and FC moderates the negative impact of NWG on RI, further moderating the chain mediation between RI and IT and between NWG and KH.
Originality/value
First, this study established the correlation between NWG and KH, as well as analyzed the internal mechanism between the two. Besides, this study adds to scholars’ understanding of the underlying mechanisms by which these effects could occur. Second, this study demonstrated the moderating effect of FC – a situational feature that has been neglected in previous studies. Furthermore, this study can not only complement the situational factors ignored in previous studies but also broaden the application scope of CAPS. Finally, this study effectively combines COR and CAPS, which provides a basis for the application of these two theories in the future.
Being in the Know Yucel, Meltem; Sjobeck, Gustav R.; Glass, Rebecca ...
Human nature (Hawthorne, N.Y.),
09/2021, Letnik:
32, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Gossip (evaluative talk about others) is ubiquitous. Gossip allows important rules to be clarified and reinforced, and it allows individuals to keep track of their social networks while strengthening ...their bonds to the group. The purpose of this study is to decipher the nature of gossip and how it relates to friendship connections. To measure how gossip relates to friendship, participants from men’s and women’s collegiate competitive rowing (crew) teams (
N
= 44) noted their friendship connections and their tendencies to gossip about each of their teammates. Using social network analysis, we found that the crew members’ friend group connectedness significantly correlated with their positive and negative gossip network involvement. Higher connectedness among friends was associated with less involvement in spreading negative gossip and/or being a target of negative gossip. More central connectedness to the friend group was associated with more involvement in spreading positive gossip and/or being a target of positive gossip. These results suggest that the spread of both positive and negative gossip may influence and be influenced by friendship connections in a social network.
In 3 studies with student samples, we advance a social‐motivational approach to gossip. We developed the Motives to Gossip Questionnaire to distinguish negative influence, information gathering and ...validation, social enjoyment, and group protection as motives underlying gossip. Study 1 demonstrated that these motives can be distinguished empirically, and that the informational motive was the most prevalent reason to instigate gossip. Study 2 showed that group protection was especially important when the opportunity to gossip with a group member about another member's norm‐violating behavior was salient. Study 3 showed that when participants imagined someone gossiped to them about another group member's norm violation, and ascribed this to group protection, they rated the gossip as social and did not disapprove of it.
Infodemics, often including rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories, have been common during the COVID-19 pandemic. Monitoring social media data has been identified as the best method for tracking ...rumors in real time and as a possible way to dispel misinformation and reduce stigma. However, the detection, assessment, and response to rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories in real time are a challenge. Therefore, we followed and examined COVID-19-related rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories circulating on online platforms, including fact-checking agency websites, Facebook, Twitter, and online newspapers, and their impacts on public health. Information was extracted between December 31, 2019 and April 5, 2020, and descriptively analyzed. We performed a content analysis of the news articles to compare and contrast data collected from other sources. We identified 2,311 reports of rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories in 25 languages from 87 countries. Claims were related to illness, transmission and mortality (24%), control measures (21%), treatment and cure (19%), cause of disease including the origin (15%), violence (1%), and miscellaneous (20%). Of the 2,276 reports for which text ratings were available, 1,856 claims were false (82%). Misinformation fueled by rumors, stigma, and conspiracy theories can have potentially serious implications on the individual and community if prioritized over evidence-based guidelines. Health agencies must track misinformation associated with the COVID-19 in real time, and engage local communities and government stakeholders to debunk misinformation.
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.
Abstract
Gossip promotes prosocial behavior via reputational concern. However, the relative effectiveness of positive and negative gossip has been understudied. I examined to what extent positive and ...negative gossip promoted prosocial behavior when a potential consequence of gossip was positively framed (a third party offering a financial bonus) and negatively framed (a third party deducting a bonus). I found that gossip, irrespective of its valence, promoted generosity via reputational concern in both contexts. Yet, analyses suggested that positive gossip may have a stronger effect in promoting prosociality. The findings, together with previous findings, call for further investigation of the relationship between the effectiveness of positive and negative gossip in promoting prosociality and types of reputational consequences.
Although researchers have examined the effects of negative workplace gossip on target employees' work-related behavior, it remains unclear when and how personality traits play a role between negative ...workplace gossip and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Drawing upon the transactional model of stress and coping, we posit a mediated moderation model of the effects of self-monitoring and impression management tactics on the relationship between negative workplace gossip and target employees' OCB. By collecting supervisor-subordinate dyadic time-lagged data, we demonstrated that the relationship between negative workplace gossip and OCB was weaker when employees were high self-monitors. In addition, we found that the moderating effects of self-monitoring were mediated by the use of impression management tactics.
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.
Gossip algorithms have received a lot of attention in recent years due to their ability to compute global statistics using local pair-wise communications. Simple execution, robustness to topology ...changes, and distributed nature make these algorithms more attractive to wireless sensor network (WSN) applications. Periodic gossip algorithm is a special case of gossip algorithm, where neighbouring nodes gossip at every time instant. Convergence rate plays a fundamental role in effectively measuring the performance of periodic gossip algorithms. However, these algorithms are inherently iterative and estimating their convergence rate for large-scale WSNs is a computationally challenging task. Hence, to utilize the periodic gossip algorithms for sensor networks, it is necessary to study the convergence rate with less computational resources. In this work, we model the WSN as a one-dimensional lattice network and derive the closed form expressions of convergence rate for even and odd number of nodes. To realize the closed-form expressions of convergence rate, we obtain the exact formulas of eigenvalues for pentadiagonal matrices. The numerical analysis reveals the new design insights into the effect of gossip weight, network size, and probability of link failures on the performance of convergence rate. Specifically, we prove that <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{w} =0.9 </tex-math></inline-formula> achieves fast convergence rate over <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">{w} =0.5 </tex-math></inline-formula> for large-scale WSNs. Our theoretical results provide the basic analytical tools for controlling the performance of periodic gossip algorithms in large-scale WSNs.
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