We all do it, know people who do it and know people who don't have time for it. Gossiping is an integral part of peer groups, talking about the girl who wears too much make-up, the boy who sleeps around or the annoying habits of your boss/work colleague. Gossiping can be harmless and is fairly natural within peer relationships. However, as ever there is a degree of gossiping that people may find too much and Sally Farley's study 2011 actually showed that gossipers are perceived as unlikeable and as lacking social influence. She asked students (mostly female) to imagine someone they knew who liked to talk about others a lot and to rate that person for likability and social influence (amongst other things). Prolific gossipers were found to be less liked than non-gossipers and less socially powerful than non-gossipers.
This finding contradicted previous findings that people actually enjoy gossipers company. Farley suggested that it may be that having gossipy friends serves a purpose of learning information about others but we tend to keep them at arms length.
Information found from Farley,S. (2011). Is gossip power? The inverse relationships between gossip, power and likability. European Journal of Social Psychology, 41 (5), 574-579 DOI
This is interesting! There can also be a thin line between gossipers and bullies - and no one likes a bully!
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