A Social Comparison Account of Gossip

By Sarah R. Wert, Peter Salovey. 2004

311 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1dd26089697474a7280af55dfae14dee0ab5ce0a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Interpersonal chemistry through negativity: Bonding by sharing negative attitudes about others (2006, background): “Because negative gossip typically involves an exchange of unflattering information about other persons (Eder & Enke, 1991), it provides opportunities fordownwardsocialcomparisons.Thesedownwardcomparisons,inturn,canboostself-esteem and facilitate social identities by delineating the boundaries betwee”
Envy: An Adversarial Review and Comparison of Two Competing Views (2019, background): “Thus, via superficially malicious outcomes such as gossip and schadenfreude, invidious comparisons may fulfill interpersonal and group-level functions (e.g., Inoue, Hoogland, Takehashi, & Murata, 2015; Wert & Salovey, 2004).”
Age differences in women's tendency to gossip are mediated by their mate value (2012, background): “Wert and Salovey (2004) argue that the threat of a rival evokes jealousy because one makes upward comparisons with the rival, and negative gossip about her could be an indirect – and socially accepted – way to express this jealousy.”
A Social Network Analysis of Positive and Negative Gossip in Organizational Life (2010, background): “It can potentially transmit information that will help an individual compete for organizational rewards and promotions (Wert & Salovey, 2004).”
The Psychology of Self‐defense: Self‐Affirmation Theory (2006, background): “…the self with a clearly inferior other (Fein, Hoshino‐ Browne, Davies, & Spencer, 2003), gossiping negatively about a third party (Wert, 2004; Wert & Salovey, 2004), or harshly judging a political ingroup member who fails to demonstrate as much fervor for the cause as one personally does…”
The Evil Queen's Dilemma: Linking Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry to Benign and Malicious Envy (2016, background): “Maliciously envious individuals tend to gossip about others and feel schadenfreude at their suffering (Van de Ven et al., 2014; Wert & Salovey, 2004).”
A Social Context Model of Envy and Social Undermining (2012, background): “An individual can alleviate the unpleasantness associated with envy by ag- grandizing the self at the expense of targeted individuals (Wert & Salovey, 2004).”
The five-dimensional curiosity scale: Capturing the bandwidth of curiosity and identifying four unique subgroups of curious people (2018, unknown): “…behavioral preference to seek out and contribute gossip (e.g., Renner, 2006) – an adaptive evolutionary strategy to deﬁne and navigate social relations including the norms and behaviors that are rewarded and punished in a tribe, and who is worthy of trust and suspicion (e.g., Wert & Salovey, 2004).”
Individual differences in attitudes towards gossip (2005, methodology): “When considering previous theory and research, which suggests that gossiping is socially undesirable ( Wert & Salovey, 2004; Nevo et al., 1994), it makes perfect sense that participants would be especially biased against sharing gossip that might damage someones reputation.”
Social comparison processes in organizations (2007, background): “…this literature has been its capacity to explain social behavior in a variety of speciWc situations and contexts, such as judging health and illness (e.g., Tennen, McKee, & AZeck, 2000), gossiping with others (e.g., Wert & Salovey, 2004), and performing family chores (Grote, Naylor, & Clark, 2002).”
Is gossip power? The inverse relationships between gossip, power, and likability (2011, background): “Gossiping widely about the sexual infidelities of an enemy acts to increase one’s own status (in part through downward social comparison) (Wert & Salovey, 2004) communicates to others that sexual indiscretion is not acceptable (Foster, 2004) and bonds the gossiper and the gossip recipient more so…”