Openness to being gossiped about: understanding gossip from the target’s perspective

Abstract

It is often assumed that, if given the choice, people would prefer not to be gossiped about. We address this assumption by investigating reactions to gossip from the perspective of its potential targets. In two nationally representative samples, we assess whether people are ever open to being the topic of other people’s gossip and find a general aversion to being talked about, unless positively. However, some people reliably do prefer to be the focus of gossip: a meta-analytic summary showed that being male and more narcissistic predicted a greater desire to be the focus of gossip, even when that gossip is negative. And, older adults had a lower desire to be positively gossiped about. We also test in confirmatory experiments whether people correctly perceive others’ preferences and find that people overestimate the extent to which others want to be gossiped about, but only when the gossip is positive.