The Impact of Negative Gossip on Target and Receiver. A “Big Two” Analysis

Abstract

Negative gossip can negatively influence the gossip target as well as the gossip receiver. Building on the “Big Two” of agency and communion and their facets of assertiveness and competence (agency) and warmth and morality (communion), we show in three studies that negative gossip based on these four types of content differentially affect targets’ and receivers’ reactions. Targets’ identity threat was particularly high after negative assertiveness and warmth gossip, their reputation threat and their negative affect were especially high after negative morality gossip. Receivers’ impressions of and negative affect toward the target were most negative after negative morality gossip. Findings are discussed with respect to the Big Two framework and with respect to the target versus receiver perspective in social cognition.

Ethical approval

All studies reported in this paper have been performed according to APA ethical standards for the treatment of human subjects. Since data collection was anonymously and involved no identifying information and no medical treatment, no ethics approval for the study was needed according to the guidelines of our university. In the introductions of the questionnaires participants were informed that their participation is voluntary, that they can cancel their participation at any time, and that their data will be treated anonymously. The informed consent of the participants was implied through survey completion.

Author contributions

NH and AA were both responsible for all parts of the conducted research and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as potential conflict of interest.

Notes

Acknowledgments

The present research was supported by a grant from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg to Nicole Hauke. We thank Kim Peters, Daniela Bernhardt, and Tamara Hagmaier-Göttle for helpful suggestions to an earlier version of this paper. Antonia Eisele, Jessica Foreman, Yvonne Kiesel, Juliane Rehm, and Kevin Reichel helped in data collection.

Notes

1 Moreover, negative gossip scenarios have been chosen since the agentic and communal self-concept is normally positive and relatively high. Thus, negative information can lead to a decrease in self-concept. In contrary, positive information could simply lead to ceiling effects, especially concerning communion.

2 The data of the three studies can be received upon request from the authors.

3 In order to avoid confounding effects due to gender, the acquaintance in the story was always of the same sex as the participant, i.e. female participants read a story about a female acquaintance and male participants read a story about a male acquaintance. This was applied to all studies reported here.

4 The values for the communion-morality and agency-competence conditions have already been reported in Hauke and Abele, (2019, pilot study for Study 2).

5 A confirmatory factor analysis conducted by Hauke and Abele, (2019) showed that the two factors of identity threat and reputation threat can be empirically clearly distinguished. Moreover, a two-factorial solution allows a better interpretation of the data than a simple one-factorial solution with “negative reaction to gossip” as a single dependent variable.

6 In addition, we tested for possible gender effects by including gender as additional factor in the ANOVA. There was a small interaction effect of gender and type of reaction, η² = 0.04. Women (M = 3.11, SD = 1.45) showed considerably higher identity threat than men (M = 2.43, SD = 1.26), d = 0.50. Regarding reputation threat, means of women (M = 4.55, SD = 1.41) and men (M = 4.42, SD = 1.50) were comparably high, d = 0.09. However, the three-way interaction of gender, condition, and type of reaction, η² = 0.01, was negligible.

7 In addition, we tested for possible gender effects by including gender as additional factor in the ANOVA. There was a medium-sized two-way interaction of gender and type of reaction, η² = 0.08. Women (M = 4.75, SD = 1.29) reported considerably higher reputation threat than men (M = 3.83, SD = 1.40), d = 0.68. Moreover, women (M = 2.49, SD = 1.05) also reported somewhat higher identity threat than men (M = 2.23, SD = 1.13), d = 0.25. There was also a medium-sized three-way interaction of gender, condition, and type of reaction, η² = 0.05. But we refrain from testing our hypotheses separated by condition and gender because group sizes then would become too small (15≤n ≤ 25) and because gender was equally distributed across conditions. Moreover, the interaction of type of reaction × condition remained stable when gender was included in the analysis, η² = 0.07.

8 In addition, we tested for possible gender effects by including gender as additional factor in the ANOVA. The main effect of gender, η² = 0.07, was of medium size. Women (M = 3.86, SD = 0.81) generally reported higher negative affect than men (M = 3.42, SD = 0.92), d = 0.51. However, the interaction of gender and condition was negligibly small, η²<0.01.

9 When developing this new measure, we tried to adapt some of the items to the identity threat and reputation threat measures used in Studies 1 and 2.

10 The items are partly different from the ones used in Study 2, because we wanted to shorten the scale and adapt it to the perceiver perspective.

11 One possible methodology that is closer to real-life situations would be to expose participants to real gossip in the laboratory. But since negative information about the own person told by a stranger to a stranger would probably not produce the same reactions as negative information about the own person told by an acquaintance within the mutual circle of friends, the participants must be acquainted. Exposing participants to ostensibly “real” gossip told by a friend is not acceptable for obvious ethical reasons. Even if participants are fully debriefed after being exposed to seemingly “real” negative gossip, perceptions based on false information can persevere (Ross, Lepper, & Hubbard, 1975).