This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Workplace gossip is often viewed as negative, but research from The James & Gail Ellis School of Business Leadership has shown that it can play a more complex role in organizational relationships. Previously, University of Iowa associate professor Trevor Spoelma and UNM Ellis associate professor Andrea Hetrick found that positive gossip—talking favorably about someone who is not present—could reduce social loafing and contribute to stronger team performance.
The research also found that gossip can help teams share important social information, establish norms and strengthen relationships. Building on that work, Hetrick, Spoelma and Ellis associate professor Lisa Marchiondo examined a different question. "A lot of previous research has focused on the person who's being talked about," said Hetrick.
"But we wanted to know how gossiping changes the perception of the person doing the gossip." In their research, "Do Men Who Spill the Tea in Teams Get Burned? Gender Differences in Perceived Competence and Leadership Emergence of Team Members Who Gossip," they found that gender influenced how people perceived employees who engaged in negative workplace gossip. While women were sometimes perceived more favorably, the researchers consistently found that men experienced backlash for engaging in the same gossip behavior as women.
This finding is novel because prior research has shown that women are typically penalized more than men for engaging in workplace mistreatment. The research is published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Gossip has commonly been tied to women.
In fact, while working with Hetrick and Spoelma, Marchiondo happened upon an older dictionary and found that it defined gossip as talk associated with women. "I came across a 90-year-old dictionary while staying at the historic Castañeda Hotel in Las Vegas, New Mexico. Out of curiosity, I looked up the word 'gossip' because we had just begun our research project.
Interestingly, one definition linked gossip to women and even provided a quote from Chaucer that called a woman 'my gossip,'" said Marchiondo. "This really highlights the deeply embedded historical association that we have with gossip being congruent as a behavior that women do and that men don't do," said Hetrick. In the first study, the researchers followed a sample of 272 students in 63 project teams over the course of a semester.
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