An Integrative Definition and Framework to Study Gossip

Abstract

The omnipresence of workplace gossip makes understanding gossip processes imperative to grasp social life in organizations. Although gossip research has recently experienced an upsurge across the social sciences, findings regarding the consequences of gossip are conflicting. A potential reason is that gossip is conceptualized in myriad different manners in the scientific literature, causing conceptual confusion and rendering theoretical integration impossible. In order to resolve this, we systematically reviewed 6114 scientific articles on gossip and identified 324 papers that define gossip. From the definitions we extracted two essential characteristics of gossip on which there seems to be good agreement within the literature, namely (1) that gossip is communication between humans involving a sender, receiver, and target, and (2) that the target is absent or unaware of the communicated content. These formed the basis of a broad, integrative definition of gossip: a sender communicating to a receiver about a target who is absent or unaware of the content. Furthermore, our review revealed that some definitions discuss characteristics on which there is less agreement: gossip valence (from negative to neutral to positive) and formality (from informal to intermediate to formal). We propose incorporating these characteristics in a multidimensional scaling framework that can guide future research. Our broad, integrative definition of gossip and the multidimensional scaling framework provide the building blocks for a systematic, integrated knowledge base on the role of gossip in human social life, which can foster future theory development and hypothesis testing, and thereby ultimately help organizations to manage gossip.

Gossip about Coronavirus: Infection status and norm adherence shape social responses

“…Third, in our study, we did not compare the effects of gossip information and information from more official sources, but rather only studied gossip as a source of information. While information about specific individuals is most likely spread through social groups via more informal channels such as gossip (Dores Cruz, Nieper, et al, 2020; Dunbar, 2004; Hannerz, 1967), in some cases, information pertaining to infection risk can be communicated through more objective sources. Contact tracing apps are becoming more common across countries and could provide official information on the infection status of people one encounters, which often are group members (European Commission, 2020; Zastrow, 2020).…”

“…We measured how participants intended to behave towards the target on two composite scales (adapted from Dores Cruz, Thielmann et al, 2020). A first composite (interact, avoid, exclude, select, shun) measured intentions to avoid the target (e.g., “I would avoid Robin”; α = .86).…”

“…We also measured the extent to which participants perceived the gossip as true using a single item (“To what extent do you think the information is true”; Dores Cruz, Thielmann et al, 2020; Hess & Hagen, 2006). This item was rated on a seven-point scale ranging from 1 ( definitely false ) to 7 ( definitely true ).…”

“…Gossip, defined as a sender communicating to a receiver about a target who is absent or unaware of the content (Dores Cruz, Nieper, et al, 2020) is one of the most prevalent forms of everyday communication within social groups (e.g., Dores Cruz, Thielmann, et al, 2020; Dunbar et al, 1997; Robbins & Karan, 2019). Gossip has been argued to allow group members to map each other’s characteristics that are otherwise difficult to ascertain (e.g., because it is impossible to constantly observe all others directly).…”

Dealing With Negative Workplace Gossip: From the Perspective of Face

“…Gossip is ubiquitous in organizations. Recently, it has been defined as “a sender communicating to a receiver about a target who is absent or unaware of the content” (Dores Cruz et al, 2021 ). Typical gossip can either be positive or negative (Brady et al, 2017 ).…”