Age differences in women’s tendency to gossip are mediated by their mate value

Massar, Karlijn; Buunk, Abraham P.; Rempt, Sanna

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.09.013

Cited by 90 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Some studies attribute this association to gender schemas, built since childhood, which determine the processing of social information (Card et al, 2008 ). Another conclusion from these results should be that it is essential to include boys in the study on gossip and cybergossip, unlike several studies in the past that used only female subjects (McDonald et al, 2007 ; Massar et al, 2012 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

How Much Do Adolescents Cybergossip? Scale Development and Validation in Spain and Colombia

et al. 2018

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Cybergossip is the act of two or more people making evaluative comments via digital devices about somebody who is not present. This cyberbehavior affects the social group in which it occurs and can either promote or hinder peer relationships. Scientific studies that assess the nature of this emerging and interactive behavior in the virtual world are limited. Some research on traditional gossip has identified it as an inherent and defining element of indirect relational aggression. This paper adopts and argues for a wider definition of gossip that includes positive comments and motivations. This work also suggests that cybergossip has to be measured independently from traditional gossip due to key differences when it occurs through ICT. This paper presents the Colombian and Spanish validation of the Cybergossip Questionnaire for Adolescents (CGQ-A), involving 3,747 high school students (M = 13.98 years old, SD = 1.69; 48.5% male), of which 1,931 were Colombian and 1,816 were Spanish. Test models derived from item response theory, confirmatory factor analysis, content validation, and multi-group analysis were run on the full sample and subsamples for each country and both genders. The obtained optimal fit and psychometric properties confirm the robustness and suitability of a one-dimensional structure for the cybergossip instrument. The multi-group analysis shows that the cybergossip construct is understood similarly in both countries and between girls and boys. The composite reliability ratifies convergent and divergent validity of the scale. Descriptive results show that Colombian adolescents gossip less than their Spanish counterparts and that boys and girls use cybergossip to the same extent. As a conclusion, this study confirmes the relationship between cybergossip and cyberbullying, but it also supports a focus on positive cybergossip in psychoeducational interventions to build positive virtual relationships and prevent risky cyberbehaviors.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 87%

How Much Do Adolescents Cybergossip? Scale Development and Validation in Spain and Colombia

et al. 2018

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“…Because it takes place in their absence, targets may experience negative gossip about themselves as offensive and unfair and may hold the gossiper responsible for harming them (Lazarus, 1991; Solomon, 1993). Gossipers may indeed abusively self-enhance at the expense of gossip targets (Wert and Salovey, 2004), by damaging their reputation (Burt, 2008), restraining their power (Ogasawara, 1998), or decreasing their sexual attractiveness (Massar et al, 2012). Targets of negative gossip are likely to feel that the gossiper has violated their interests and to experience other-directed negative emotion (e.g., anger, Lazarus, 1991).…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-Evaluative and Other-Directed Emotional and Behavioral Responses to Gossip About the Self

2019

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Gossip, or informal talk about others who are not present, is omnipresent in daily interactions. As such, people who are targeted are likely to hear some gossip about themselves, which may have profound implications for their well-being. We investigated the emotions and behavioral intentions of people who hear performance-related gossip about themselves. Based on the affective events theory, we predicted that gossip incidents have strong emotional consequences for their targets and that these emotional responses trigger different behaviors. Two scenario studies (N1 = 226, Mage = 21.76; N2 = 204, Mage = 34.11) and a critical incident study (N = 240, Mage = 37.04) compared targets' responses to positive and negative gossip. Whereas, targets of positive gossip experienced positive self-conscious emotions (e.g., pride), targets of negative gossip experienced negative self-conscious emotions (e.g., guilt), especially when they had low core self-evaluations. In turn, these negative self-conscious emotions predicted repair intentions. Positive gossip also led to positive other-directed emotions (e.g., liking), which predicted intentions to affiliate with the gossiper. Negative gossip, however, also generated other-directed negative emotions (e.g., anger), especially for targets with high reputational concerns, which in turn predicted retaliation intentions against the gossiper. This pattern of emotional reactions to self-relevant gossip was found to be unique and different from emotional reactions to self-relevant feedback. These results show that gossip has self-evaluative and other-directed emotional consequences, which predict how people intend to behaviorally react after hearing gossip about themselves.

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“…Women competing with other women use strategies such as derogating other women with respect to physical attractiveness (e.g. Vaillancourt and Sharma 2011), and indirect forms of aggression, such as gossip, to damage other women's (sexual) reputation (Massar et al 2012;Geary 1999). Thus, one might have expected that women would prefer a less attractive companion in a mating context than in a neutral context.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A night on the town: when the importance of mate acquisition overrides intrasexual competition

Buunk

Massar

2014

Self Cite

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It is argued that, while men may be intrasexually more competitive than women, to attract potential mates, men will, more than women, associate with same-sex friends who are attractive to the opposite sex. Therefore, more than women, men will choose more physically attractive and dominant companions in a mating context than in a neutral context. In Study 1 among 262 participants a mating scenario (going to a party) and a neutral scenario (seeing a movie) were developed, and it was shown that the mating scenario did indeed induce more a mating context than the neutral scenario. In Study 2 among 167 participants the hypotheses were tested by examining the preferences for a companion in both scenarios. The findings from Study 2 supported the predictions. In response to the mating as compared to the neutral scenario, men, but not women, found the attractiveness of a companion more important, preferred a more socially dominant companion, and found the social dominance of a companion more important. Men as well as women preferred in general companions who were less attractive than themselves, but preferred a more attractive companion in a mating than in a neutral context. The effects for social dominance were in general more pronounced among individuals high in sociosexual orientation (SOI). To conclude especially mens' attitude towards same sex others in a mating context may be driven by the desire to associate, rather than to compete, with same-sex others who are attractive to the opposite sex.

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Age differences in women’s tendency to gossip are mediated by their mate value

Abstract: In the current study it was investigated whether age differences in women's tendency to gossip exist, and whether these could be accounted for by self-reported

Cited by 90 publications

References 24 publications

How Much Do Adolescents Cybergossip? Scale Development and Validation in Spain and Colombia

How Much Do Adolescents Cybergossip? Scale Development and Validation in Spain and Colombia

Self-Evaluative and Other-Directed Emotional and Behavioral Responses to Gossip About the Self

A night on the town: when the importance of mate acquisition overrides intrasexual competition

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