personality traits of a gossip personality traits of a gossip

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). 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. In the study, participants were divided into subgroups, and then each person was given a number of points representing small sums of money. Adv. Nat. It appears that people mainly gossip for informational reasons and only marginally to harm others. (2012). Anyone whos been around religious people has likely encountered this type of gossip. We care about fairness. On being eager and uninhibited: narcissism and approachavoidance motivation. Synonyms for GOSSIP: gossiper, informant, gossipmonger, informer, yenta, circulator, newsmonger, quidnunc; Antonyms of GOSSIP: shut up, clam up 85, 842860. Psychol. If the information being talked about were positive, it would be labeled praise or envy. Br. doi: 10.1348/096317905X40817, Waddington, K., and Fletcher, C. (2005). We all know gossip to be a human universalbut does it get an undeservedly bad rap? However, we can take some cues from these fictional people and their character traits in order to achieve our own goals. A self-centered character may learn the value of sharing with others in order to fulfill their goal. The Bayesian analysis has several advantages over classical statistical inference (e.g., van de Schoot et al., 2013; Wagenmakers et al., 2018b) such as less susceptibility to small sample size (van de Schoot et al., 2013). B., Neyer, F. J., and van Aken, M. (2013). Article Images Copyright , How to Biblically Celebrate New Life in the Spring, California - Do Not Sell My Personal Information. Reputation, gossip, and human cooperation. Soc. All rights reserved. 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). To do so, we translated the Motives to Gossip Questionnaire into German. Psychol. Screaming Mimis are loud and obnoxious, and their abusive behavior is meant to berate and humiliate people. In addition, individuals scoring higher on the dark triad value themselves over the others (Jonason et al., 2015), are less concerned with others' welfare (Djeriouat and Trmolire, 2014; Jonason et al., 2015; Noser et al., 2015) and with fairness (Jonason et al., 2015). a firm . Using gossip to build relationships was more often rated as relevant by individuals scoring higher on narcissism than by those scoring lower on narcissism both in work (p < 0.001) and private (p = 0.007) settings. (2015) examined brain imaging of men and women as they listened to positive and negative gossip about themselves and celebrities. 67, 1116. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0069996, Harvey, M. G., Heames, J. T., Richey, R. G., and Leonard, N. (2006). 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. Photo courtesy: Thinkstock/Wavebreakmedia. A social network analysis of positive and negative gossip in organizational life. Sex Roles 12, 281286. Psychol. A coworker took all the credit for a project you both worked on in a meeting with your boss. While the Bless Your Heart gossip cloaks negative information about others in a guise of compassion, the bitter-vengeful gossip makes no attempt at hiding his or her glee at others misfortune. doi: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00772.x, Williams, K. M., Nathanson, C., and Paulhus, D. L. (2010). The motivational pattern was highly similar between private and work context. Dunbar, R. (1998). Avoider gossip is based in fear, not love. PLoS ONE 13:e0203891. Regardless of important social functions, gossip has a rather negative reputation. Read: That urge to share a juicy piece of news when you hear it is part of who we are and a natural characteristic of the species weve become. The inverse relationships between gossip, power, and likability. Dif. The present study shows that the negative reputation is not justified as individuals indicate they mainly use gossip for informational reasons and not to harm others. Constructing Reality and Its Alternatives: An Inclusion/ Exclusion Model of Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Social Judgment (ZUMA-Arbeitsbericht, 1991/05). The study conforms with the Declaration of Helsinki and the ethics guidelines of the German Psychological Society. The meaning, antecedents and consequences of rumour and gossip in organisations. Taken together, the results suggest that gossip is better than its reputation as people report to mainly use gossip for informational reasons and not to ruin the reputation of others. 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). 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). Another word, Motzei Shem Rah, means "slander and untrue remarks". People who do not like a person will typically seek out other people who share a mutual dislike for the same person. Celebrities: from teachers to friends. Gossip runs like a thread through our social world. An in the know gossip frequently starts sentences with Have you heard? Workplace bullying in the public sector: understanding the racial dimension. Second, to examine whether the bad reputation of gossip is justified or not, we explore the role of the dark personality traits in gossip motivation. In the present study, we examined the differential importance of reasons to engage in gossip behavior. Lying. When my husband first became a pastor, he quickly learned frustration, disappointment, and hurt sometimes came with the territory. This unsolicited interference often manifests as questions and comments relating to our personal matters such as our health, career, and relationships. Remembering what happened: Memory errors and survey reports, in The Science of Self-Report: Implications for Research and Practice, eds A. The most important motive was validating information about the gossip target followed by the motive to acquire new information about the gossip target. Neuroticism. Assimilation and contrast effects in part whole question sequences: a conversational logic analysis. We tend to think of gossip as a negative behavior when, for instance, we tattle on someone or share information behind someone elses back that may show them in a bad light. 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. Personality traits are small, simple ways to help you set your character apart from every other character. 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. Remembering an event depends in part on the depth and elaboration of the encoding process of the event. Soc. The dark triad and framing effects predict selfish behavior in a one-shot prisoner's dilemma. Psychonomic Bull. Also, it is likely that work and private setting differ on a competitiveness-cooperativeness dimension. Thats not a responsible way of sharing information. According to Wagenmakers et al. Research demonstrates that gossip is emotionally rewarding. Psychol. The dark triad personality traits were measured using the German version of the Dirty Dozen scale (DD, German version: Kfner et al., 2014; original version: Jonason and Webster, 2010). Research on gossip: taxonomy, methods, and future directions. Gossip in this broad sense plays a number of different roles in the maintenance of socially functional groups through time., We are much more social [than our evolutionary forbearers], says Ludden, so it can be very helpful to get information about people [from others] when this network is too big to observe by ourselves.. They are quick to blame and short on responsibility. The Dark Triad of personality and utilitarian moral judgment: the mediating role of Honesty/Humility and Harm/Care. Consequently, we explore whether motives show differential importance between these two situations and whether the dark triad traits show differential relationships to gossip reasons across situations (see also Beersma and Van Kleef, 2012). Peng et al. You find out your friends ex is cheating on his new partner. Thus, even though people disapprove of gossip in general, they consider the reasons people might have to gossip. Dif. Facing them and coming to terms with their attitude and letting yourself know it is a weakness in them, which in time hopefully they will overcome and still hanging around them can be challenging. Roeser, K., McGregor, V. E., Stegmaier, S., Mathew, J., Kubler, A., and Meule, A. doi: 10.1177/0146167208316688, Furnham, A., Richards, S. C., and Paulhus, D. L. (2013). When we . doi: 10.1073/pnas.0704598104. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2016.05.019, Wu, J., Balliet, D., and Van Lange, P. A. Thus, gossip activity highly depends on organizational and occupational features. Gossip refers to the exchange of information about characteristics and behaviors of an absent person (Dunbar, 2004b; Foster, 2004; Peters and Kashima, 2015). And indeed, a post hoc power analysis for the repeated ANOVA revealed that the F-test of the main effect situation did not achieve sufficient power (0.40) to detect an effect. Another argument speaking against the assumption that an assimilation effect has occurred is the operation of conversational norms that prohibit redundancy. Bull. They always look at the negative sides of life and find extremely difficult to cope up with stress. Similarly, in the private setting, in 4 out of 6 analyses the BF10s are highest when the model includes only narcissism. So, keep on talking. Prayer request gossip hurts as much as any other type of gossipmaybe more. 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). 22, 273288. Social media is an ideal platform for gossip. 8, 7899. Curious employees are valued for their ability to independently motivate themselves to learn and grow in their roles and work. In contrast, the Bayes factor (BF) provided in Bayesian analysis is comparative as it weighs the support for one model against that of another. 35, 2525. Manager J. He is bursting with a thirst for knowledge, inventiveness and creativity. And although Gretchen Wieners is a mean girl, she is definitely very relatable. Pride is crouching inside our belittling of the struggles of others. 13, 135150. Regression analysis with motives as dependent variables and dark triad personality traits as independent variables (N = 134). You find out someone in your company is not a team player and you let other coworkers know so that they can try to avoid working with that colleague. 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. 41, 574579. What have you done for me lately? The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. Soc. While the Big Five personality traits help us broadly define and explore ones personality, there are many more examples of personality traits both positive and negative. 15. 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. Eur. Malicious mouths? Thus, trait psychology rests on the idea that people differ from . J. Commun. This reaction also occurred when the participants heard negative gossip in general. J. Psychol. All authors contributed to manuscript revision, read and approved the submitted version. It's cowering in our jokes about the 'craziness' of our spouse. 40, 635. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.40.4.635. RBum mich mit der Person, mit der ich geredet habe, gut zu stellen. In line with that notion, research shows that individuals who show a high frequency of negative gossip are rated as highly dislikable (Farley, 2011). Soc. Unraveling the paradoxes of narcissism: a dynamic self-regulatory processing model. That is, individuals scoring high on the dark triad traits gossip as often as individuals scoring low on the dark triad traits in order to protect somebody. (2014). Gossip in evolutionary perspective. It refers to the "prohibition of telling gossip, truthful remarks about a non-present person or party.". Hum. 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. If anything, the results suggest the opposite. J. Pers. The Dark Triad at work: how toxic employees get their way. In order to survive and pass along your genes it has pretty much always been necessary to know about the lives of those around you: who had powerful friends, who was sleeping with whom, who had limited resources, and who might stab you in the back when times got tough. 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. However, only four participants had missing values between 28.60 and 35.70%. Taken together, we assume that the work context reflects a rather strong (i.e., clear normative expectations) and competitive situation; and the private context reflects a rather weak and more cooperative situation. Consider the words of Romans 12:17-21: Never pay back evil with more evil. 56, 12131232. J. Appl. 55, 323. 98, 132145. Contemp. Identifying and profiling scholastic cheaters: their personality, cognitive ability, and motivation. 8, 231246. (2018b). (2014). Even though the friend you meet for lunch after this happens has never met that coworker, you still tell that friend all the reasons your colleague didnt deserve the new position.). Behav. Pers. In private situations on the other hand, people are mostly unrestricted and have to comply with fewer norms or rules. Gossip in organizations: contexts, consequences, and controversies. Gossiping gives people a sense of power. Sci. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203891, Djeriouat, H., and Trmolire, B. Psychol. Internal consistency was highly satisfactory for all subscales (see Figure 1) and, if applicable, comparable to those of Beersma and Van Kleef (2012). Armed with the knowledge of their peers decisions, participants then played the game over again in different groupings. Gossip is not inherently bad; it plays an important role in keeping our society connected. 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. Participants were informed about the study content, that they were free to withdraw at any time without giving any reason, and that the data collection and analysis were anonymized. Pers. Pers. 9, 189201. Welche Motive Fhren zu Gossip und Welche Emotionen Begleiten uns Dabei und Resultieren Daraus? Hearing information about others serves important social functions such as learning without direct interaction and observation. 75:132. doi: 10.1037/0021-9010.75.2.132. (If any of these sound familiar, consider them an opportunity for personal growth.). The grandiose (overt) subtype is your "typical" narcissist who is bold, aggressive, and arrogant. Liar liar pants on fire: cheater strategies linked to the Dark Triad. (2013). doi: 10.1177/1059601109360389. It's a tricky phenomenon to study, though. People often exaggerate what they pass on to make a better or more coherent story or to justify why they are speaking about someone.. Thus, both kinds of analyses draw a very similar picture of the results emphasizing their reliability. Needless to say, it created a relational mess. 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). Putting this all together, the study paints a rosier picture of gossip and its utility to everyday life than many would imagine. As in the present sample more participants are employed than in the sample of previous research (Beersma and Van Kleef, 2012), individuals are presumably more occupied and have less time for gossiping just for fun. In addition, that final version was presented to two bilingual individuals (English native speakers) to review the final version. All regression analyses were also calculated including gender as control variable. (2011). For instance, when gossip validation in work context has been the dependent variable the model containing only narcissism reached the highest BF10. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2014.11.010, Nuzzo, R. L. (2017). I just hope her new job doesnt affect her family. Its probably not doing anyone any favors. Gossip tears down; love builds up. A personality trait describes how a person tends to think, feel, and behave on an ongoing basis.