Zhang, L., Ibrahim, N. and Basu, S. orcid.org/0000-0002-4457-4247 (2024) Whispered words and organizational dynamics: The nuanced evaluation of gossipers' personality and its effect on workplace advice seeking. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 115. 104643. ISSN 0022-1031
Abstract
Prior research has extensively studied workplace group dynamics within the gossip triad (i.e., sender, receiver, and target). This research shifts the focus to third-party observers outside the gossip triad, examining how they evaluate gossipers and non-gossipers, and whom they turn to for advice. Across five pre-registered experiments (N = 1400), the present work builds on an integrative definition of gossip and provides a functionalist account of observers' nuanced evaluation of gossipers' personality from a global perspective. Observers perceive gossipers as less moral and competent, but more sociable, than non-gossipers (Experiment 1). Consequently, observers are less likely to seek advice from gossipers (vs. non-gossipers) for tasks requiring high morality (e.g., enforcing ethical conduct; Experiment 2a) and high competence (e.g., managing excess inventory; Experiment 2b), yet more likely to do so for tasks requiring high sociability (e.g., organizing a welcome lunch; Experiment 2c). A moderation-of-process approach shows that incidental cues signaling morality, competence, and sociability influence observers' evaluations of and advice-seeking from gossipers (versus non-gossipers) on relevant tasks (Experiments 2a–2c). These findings remain robust in an incentive-compatible setting (Experiment 3). This research advances our understanding of observers' evaluation of gossipers and its implications for workplace advice seeking.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Gossip, Gossipers, Morality, Sociability, Competence, Advice-seeking |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Business (Leeds) > Marketing Division (LUBS) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Jun 2024 10:27 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jul 2024 09:22 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.jesp.2024.104643 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:213119 |