It seems likely that this rather altruistic motive, on the long run, serves the function of group protection. No one is benefiting., Theres also a physiological distinction to be drawn between active and passive participation in gossip. An avoider gossip learns something negative about someone, but fears addressing the issue face to face. Psychol. J. Pers. Thus, participants filled in the questionnaire twice. We were studying the chapter called Why Are There Jerks in the World, and Could I Be One of Them? in my book Seek: A Womans Guide to Meeting God. Since they derive personal value from being in the know, they arent content to simply know the private information of others; they are driven to let other people know they know. Disunity. 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). Pers. Group Organiz. In total, 40 employees from different companies in Germany were addressed. Specifically, they estimate that the average person spends 52 minutes per day gossiping. doi: 10.1111/spc3.12255, Yukl, G., and Falbe, C. M. (1990). Dif. Each participant could contribute these points to their group in which case, the points would be doubled and redistributed equally or keep them for themselves. Individ. Assuming excessive gossip would damage trust within groups and harm individuals, one might speculate that the bad reputation of gossip restricts people from gossiping excessively. People like to gossip. Your personality traits should tell you something interesting and fun about your character. Interestingly, with regard to the dark triad personality traits, only narcissism shows consistent associations with motives to gossip. doi: 10.1002/per.1860, Levin, J., and Arluke, A. Another reason to exchange information about a third person was to build trust to one's gossip partner. Interestingly, the motivation to negatively influence the reputation of somebody else is not solely associated with narcissism but also with Machiavellianism. 22, 420. doi: 10.1037/a0019265, Jones, D. N., and Figueredo, A. J. IVum unsere Gedanken ber die abwesende Person zu vergleichen. J. Pers. Nat. The chi-square statistic was significant for the work setting (2(120) = 190.92, p < 0.001) but not for the private setting 2(120) = 131.37, p = 0.22). And Feinberg notes that there are some types of gossip that should be avoided, such as gossip that is purely harmful and serves no greater purpose like mean comments about someones looks. They include: The combination of these traits can determine whether you are introverted or extroverted, open to new experiences or fearful or the unknown, agreeable or temperamental, and more. According to Wagenmakers et al. Based on the work of Mischel (1977), researchers differentiate between strong situations with normative expectations and clear roles that constrain behavior, and weak situations which do not provide normative expectations, and, therefore, allow for more freedom in behavior and the expression of personality. Specifically, they estimate that the average person spends 52 minutes per day gossiping. Neurosci. doi: 10.1037/1089-2680.8.2.111, Beersma, B., and Van Kleef, G. A. Stud. In other words, people without anything to do will eventually start talking about you. Gossip is an ubiquitous phenomenon. And overall people who were more extroverted tended to gossip more than those who were more introverted. Correlations between all scales (N = 134). Br. This holds true in two fundamental domains of life, namely the private and the work context. The depth and elaboration of the encoding reflects variables such as distinctiveness, emotional impact, and duration. Figure 1. doi: 10.1207/S15327965PLI1204_1, Muris, P., Merckelbach, H., Otgaar, H., and Meijer, E. (2017). 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. Translating Questionnaires and Other Research Instruments: Problems and Solutions. The original version of this story misstated the methodology of research published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science in 2019. They also wear their hearts on their sleeves, so it is very easy to tell whether they are happy or sad. Valuing myself over others: the Dark Triad traits and moral and social values. The German version of the extended Motives to Gossip Questionnaire is displayed in the Appendix. No significant main effect for the factor situation was yielded indicating that the importance of motives was comparable for private and work-related situations, F(1, 133) = 2.94, p = 0.09, P2 = 0.02. 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. The positive BF10s indicate that the data are more likely under the model assuming associations between the three personality traits and the respective gossip motive than under the model assuming no association. An avoider gossip might have good intentions, but rarely do they get good results. 67, 1116. Like this: Compliment: Jim and Mollys new house is amazing., Response: It should be. Malicious mouths? Hartung, F.-M., and Renner, B. Ways of explaining workplace bullying: a review of enabling, motivating and precipitating structures and processes in the work environment. Dif. This research demonstrates that people want to fit in socially, and they also want others to see them in a positive light. 35, 371390. Rev. broad-minded. 105, 10131037. 2023 TIME USA, LLC. Pers. Finally, in the present paper, concurrent associations between personality and reasons to gossip were studied. However, we found neither a significant effect nor did the results change including gender. 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. Organ. Social media is an ideal platform for gossip. A proud woman born to a highly respected Southern family, Miss Emily seems frozen in the past, bearing herself aristocratically even when she is impoverished after her controlling father's death. The Dirty Dozen scale captures narcissism (e.g., I tend to want others to admire me.), Machiavellianism (e.g., I tend to manipulate others to get my way.), and psychopathy (e.g., I tend to be callous or insensitive.) with four items for each subscale. Manag. The mean values for narcissism and Machiavellianism are comparable to previous research whereas the mean value for psychopathy is slightly lower in the present study than in previous research (Kfner et al., 2014). 74:1197. doi: 10.1037//0022-3514.74.5.1197, Peng, X., Li, Y., Wang, P., Mo, L., and Chen, Q. Assuming that gossip is a soft tactic or a form of indirect aggression (McAndrew, 2014), one might speculate more narcissistic individuals to be especially prone to use these methods in order to manipulate others while maintaining their social standing. (2012). In line with that notion, women scoring high on the dark triad traits use gossipamong other strategiesto derogate competitors (Carter et al., 2015). Curiosity is an important character trait that can drive someone to want to know or learn new skills, information and abilities without being asked beforehand. But the bottom line is this: be aware of the fine line between venting emotions and tarnishing reputations. In order to display their power and reinforce their egos, people must share the information with other individuals. Why are narcissists so charming at first sight? It's cowering in our jokes about the 'craziness' of our spouse. All factor loadings were significant (p < 0.001). Gossiping with a person in order to warn that person of a target person appears not to spur gossip for any of the dark personalities. Halter, C. (2018). 27, 169184. Comments are posted anonymously about an individual. What if you realize youve been guilty of being an in the know gossip? Is this wrong? 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. Psychol. J. Appl. If youre doing it for your own personal gain, dont, Willer says. a firm . 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). The three items were chosen based on consideration about the content and wording as well as on factor loadings obtained through a pre-study (N = 45). That knowledge helped people get ahead socially; and people who were not interested in it were at a disadvantage, McAndrew says. To consider a relationship building motive of gossip, three respective items were generated. For instance, when gossip validation in work context has been the dependent variable the model containing only narcissism reached the highest BF10. Manag. Acad. The ANOVA yielded a significant main effect for the factor motives, F(4.48, 665) = 61.54, p < 0.001, P2 = 0.32, indicating that motives were differentially important. It's a tricky phenomenon to study, though. The exchanged information enables individuals to get a map of their social environment and their position within that social environment (Suls, 1977; Baumeister et al., 2004; Foster, 2004; De Backer et al., 2007; Sommerfeld et al., 2007; Martinescu et al., 2014). personality traits of a gossip. Soc. Individ. A few months ago, a friend from church shared a concern with an acquaintance. Lying is toxic since it is self-defeating. Morf, C. C., and Rhodewalt, F. (2001). Soc. If we do vent to people, lets be sure we dont taint another persons reputation in a way that cant be recovered. This type of gossip may think, my lifes uneventful, so lets talk about someone elses life. 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). It would be nice if we could capture the entire human experience into five simple words. (2012). In the study, participants were divided into subgroups, and then each person was given a number of points representing small sums of money. Want more tips like these? 52, 482486. Contemp. The self, in The Handbook of Social Psychology, eds D. T. Gilbert, S. T. Fiske, and L. Gardner. Aggress. 97, 405423. Am. In each group, there is a gossiper, a receiver, and the gossipee. However, research on order effects within surveys suggests that both assimilation and contrast effects might occur (Sudman et al., 1996). 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. Also, individuals scoring high on narcissism show more indirect bullying than physical bullying (Baughman et al., 2012). According to God, a lot. This reaction also occurred when the participants heard negative gossip in general. Characteristics of gossips are: insecurity, jealous of others, low self esteem, angry at the world, have too much idle time on their hands, usually don't have any hobbies or activities they could be doing instead of rumor mongering, unhappy with their lives, don't like to see other people happy, attention seekers, like giving the illusion that Given these strengths, some limitations need to be considered. (2018a), a BF > 100 shows extreme evidence for H1. Id venture a guess that every church (and many families) in America has oneif not manyavoider gossips. Table 1. CK and MP organized the database. In accordance with the national and institutional guidelines, ethical approval was not required for this study. Its something that comes very naturally to us an integral part of conversation, information sharing and even community building. The Dark Triad of personality: a 10 year review. Similarly, in the private setting, in 4 out of 6 analyses the BF10s are highest when the model includes only narcissism. 27, 521531. Is gossip power? Internal consistency was highly satisfactory for all subscales (see Figure 1) and, if applicable, comparable to those of Beersma and Van Kleef (2012). Gossiping is rewarded, so people will continue to gossip as long as they do not hear anything negative about themselves. Gossip and the self. 56, 12131232. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2014.11.010, Nuzzo, R. L. (2017). However, they do note that the majority of gossip (75%, to be exact) is non-evaluative, or neutral, in nature.

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