Evil Acts and Malicious Gossip

Abstract

Although person perception is central to virtually all human social behavior, it is ordinarily studied in isolated individual perceivers. Conceptualizing it as a socially distributed process opens up a variety of novel issues, which have been addressed in scattered literatures mostly outside of social psychology. This article examines some of these issues using a series of multiagent models. Perceivers can use gossip (information from others about social targets) to improve their ability to detect targets who perform rare negative behaviors. The model suggests that they can simultaneously protect themselves against being influenced by malicious gossip intended to defame specific targets. They can balance these potentially conflicting goals by using specific strategies including disregarding gossip that differs from a personally obtained impression. Multiagent modeling demonstrates the outcomes produced by different combinations of assumptions about gossip, and suggests directions for further research and theoretical development.

Bad habit or social good? How perceptions of gossiper morality are related to gossip content

“…This means that we diverge from folk understandings of gossip, which tend to restrict themselves to negative evaluative talk between close friends. However, our more inclusive approach is consistent with recent definitions of gossip as 'information from others about social targets' (Smith, 2014;pp. 1).…”

“…This research speaks to recent claims that gossip is not simply a bad habit. Rather, when gossip can improve an audience's understanding of the trustworthiness or untrustworthiness of social targets, it may be a social good (Dunbar, 2004;Feinberg et al, 2014;Nowak & Sigmund, 2005;Smith, 2014). Over three studies, we showed that audiences do form impressions of gossiper morality on the basis of gossip that these gossipers share but that these impressions are not universally negative.…”

“…This possibility presumes that the information contained in gossip is reasonably accurate (at least on average), and recent work has shown that people have strategies that reduce the chance that inaccurate gossip has an excessive influence of their target-related behaviour (e.g. Smith, 2014).…”

“…In one example, Peters and Kashima (2013) found that 60% of quotes and aphorisms about gossip condemned gossipers as immoral individuals who do harm to those that they talk about. However, in contrast to these societal attitudes, recent theorising has suggested that gossipers may actually do a great deal of good (Baumeister, Zhang, & Vohs, 2004;Rosnow, 2001;Smith, 2014). In particular, it has been suggested that the information that is conveyed through gossip may contribute to people's understanding of the trustworthiness and untrustworthiness of other individuals in their social context.…”

Are we truly wicked when gossiping at work? The role of valence, interpersonal closeness and social awareness

“…Further, most research examines gossip valence as being positive vs. negative (e.g., Ellwardt, Labianca, & Wittek, 2011;Wu et al, 2016), thereby leaving room for studying further valenced nuances, such as the gossip maliciousness. In this regard, existing works on malicious gossip have proposed theoretical arguments (Wert & Salovey, 2004), applied discourse analysis (Guendozi, 2001), developed surveys (Lyons & Hughes, 2015), implemented multiagent models (Smith, 2014) or observational techniques (Low, Frey, & Brockman, 2010). To our knowledge, scholars have therefore overlooked the usefulness of experimental research for the analysis of gossip at work considered as an organizational behavior (Thau, Pitesa, & Pillutla, 2014).…”