The evaluation of negative gossipers: testing the role of group membership and social anxiety

While negative gossip serves important functions for groups, previous studies have revealed that individuals negatively evaluate negative gossipers. Given the ubiquity of gossip, there should be conditions under which negative gossipers get away with negative evaluations. In our study (N = 386), we tested the hypothesis that individuals evaluate ingroup negative gossipers more leniently than outgroup negative gossipers and that those high in social anxiety evaluate negative gossipers more negatively than those low in social anxiety, potentially regardless of the group membership of negative gossipers. We found that individuals liked and evaluated negative gossipers less and less favourably than non-gossipers regardless of their group membership, inconsistently with our hypothesis. Contrary to our hypothesis, we found that individuals high in social anxiety liked and evaluated negative gossipers more and more favourably than those low in social anxiety.