Behind your back

Why I Hate Gossip

“Did you hear Margaret from accounting is sleeping with her boss?” “Did you hear Brittany's parents got a divorce?” “Y’know Father Mark was married before he was ordained?” Gossip has been around since the stone age amongst cavemen to determine a tribe's leaders and determine thieves amongst other tribes (Black, 2009). It is now used to make conversation and bond with others. With this bond comes the underlying pain and deceit brought to others within this means of casual conversation. According to Dr. Nicholas Emler, professor of psychology at the University of London, states that 80% of conversations, amongst both men and women, are used to discuss people and their habits, regardless of good or bad intent. But the question remains to be asked, why? Why do we feel the unnecessary need to have gossip implemented in our day-to- day conversations? This essay will argue the negative effects of gossip and rumors and how it affects the workplace, social interactions and the moods of those being discussed.

So why do we gossip? Is it a means of approval of others? Is it to inform and caution others on ones traits? Is it just the mean girls or the flamboyant boys? According to the Social Issues Research Centre, while most believe women are the predominant or the full gossip partakers, it was shown that 33% of men gossiped everyday or most days in the workplace where as it was only 26% of women. Robin Dunbar, main publisher of 2003’s “Review General Psychology,” shares her studies show that, “Gossip in this broad sense plays aA number of different rules in the maintenance of socially functional groups through time. We are much more social than our evolutionary forbearers, so that it can be very helpful to get information about people when it’s network is too big to observe by ourselves.” (Dunbar, 2003). Now that we know why we gossip, what happens neurologically when we gossip and we participate in gossip. A 2015 study published by Social Neuroscience examined brain images of men and women when hearing positive and negative gossip about themselves, close friends and celebrities. It was shown that both positive and negative gossip caused more activity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. This portion of the brain is the key to navigating complex social behaviors. In addition to this activity, it was also discovered that the caudate nucleus, the reward region of the brain, was active when responding to negative gossip, as well as showing a sign of interest and entertainment.

A study conducted on September 5, 2018 consisted of a three-part hypothesis testing. The general hypothesis of the study was that those who hear negative gossip about themselves will have a negative mood or feeling alterations. The first test had a control group consisting of two controls, negative and positive gossip. The procedure of study one was participants were to have overheard gossip about themselves in the workplace with the statements, “[Target Name] knows we have to focus on the new clients and/but I have the feeling that (s)he is/isn’t working very hard lately. That’s really/not nice, because we all need to take more responsibility.” The results of the study showed that both statements created a self conscious emotion. Despite that, those who received positive gossip had less of an overall emotional impact in comparison to those who receive negative gossip.

In the second second test of the hypothesis testing, participants were randomly assigned to a gossip valence condition. From there, they were all asked to describe a specific situation in which a co- worker had said something (either positive or negative) about their work performance behind their back to another co-worker. On a 4-emotion scale (ecstatic, happy, sad, angry), those who received negative gossip all chose sad and angry and those who received positive gossip only chose happy. A survey afterwards showed that 87% of those who received negative gossip were considering gossip retaliation and only 12% who received positive gossip felt compelled to retaliate good gossip about the gossiper. As a result of this study, negative (relative to positive) gossip lead to the intent of retaliation against the gossiper.

Across the two studies, it was found that hearing positive and negative gossip endorsed self-conscious and other-directed emotions as well as behavioral intentions for gossip targets. First, the targets of negative gossip intended to repair the mistakes that were talked about due to their self-conscious negative emotions. In comparison, those who overheard positive performance based gossip about themselves were less likely to experience self-conscious positive emotions. The targets of negative gossip planned to retaliate against the gossipers, due to experiencing other-directed negative emotions such as anger or embarrassment, especially when targets were concerned about their reputations.

Although it was evident that those who heard positive gossip about themselves generated some positive emotions, the general workplace gossip is 73% negative (Gottfried, 2019). The overall results show gossip and rumors can result in a negative mood and emotions, self evaluation, consequential acts and creates a cycle of reactions, causing more rumors and more negative social interactions.

Despite being born into a world of rumors from all around, it can be seen that gossip has generally no positive impact on those who participate nor those who are targeted. Time and time again, it is argued that rumors are a vital part of communication and connection with others but as it has been discovered in research, rumors and gossip are more likely to hurt or offend the target of the gossip. Growing up, most kids learned the “rule”, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.” Maybe next time after the meeting, talk about how your day went rather than David from accounting.

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Experts.” Nydailynews.com, New York Daily News, 11 Jan. 2019, www.nydailynews.com/life-style/health/gossip-80-percent-conversations-experts-article-1.403005.

Gottfried, Sophia. “Why Do People Gossip? Here's What Science Says.” Time, Time, 25 Sept.

2019, time.com/5680457/why-do-people-gossip/.

Rosnow, Ralph L. “Rumor and Gossip Research.” American Psychological Association,

American Psychological Association, Apr. 2005, www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2005/04/gossip.

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York Times, 16 Oct. 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/10/16/science/16tier.html.

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Emotional and Behavioral Responses to Gossip About the Self. Front. Psychol. 9:2603.