ArticleFrontiers in psychology2019
Better Than Its Reputation? Gossip and the Reasons Why We and Individuals With "Dark" Personalities Talk About Others.
Article in Frontiers in psychology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 32 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Dark Tetrad Traits Differentially Predict Gossip Frequency and Motives.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Trust tangles: Who do kids trust? Unraveling young children's attitudes in the gossip mill.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Why do nurses leave their jobs? Understanding person-related hostility in the healthcare sector of Pakistan.PloS one · 2024Article
- How Does Abusive Supervision Affect Organisational Gossip? Understanding the Mediating Role of the Dark Triad.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Myth of objectivity and the origin of symbols.Frontiers in sociology · 2023Article
- Distractions, analytical thinking and falling for fake news: A survey of psychological factors.Humanities & social sciences communications · 2023Review
- Brokering or Sitting Between Two Chairs? A Group Perspective on Workplace Gossip.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Gossip is an ubiquitous phenomenon. Hearing information about others serves important social functions such as learning without direct interaction and observation. Despite important social functions gossip has a rather negative reputation. 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. Six distinct motives were identified that underlie gossip behavior: information validation, information gathering, relationship building, protection, social enjoyment, and negative influence. The most important motive was validating information about the gossip target followed by the motive to acquire new information about the gossip target. The least important motive was harming the gossip target. The motivational pattern was highly similar between private and work context. Interestingly, the importance of motives mainly depends on the gossiper's narcissism both in work and in private settings. The findings suggest that the negative reputation of gossip is not justified. In fact, even "dark" personalities appear to use gossip to tune their picture of other humans and themselves and not to harm others.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.