Bücher von Tania A Reynolds

Research on women's competition, indirect aggression, and gossip has uncovered a perplexingpattern: women deny their own competitiveness and gossip, but openly acknowledge that ofother women. The current investigation proposed one solution to this paradox: women'sunawareness of their competitive and malicious motivations grants a competitive advantage infemale intrasexual reputation competition. Gossipers who express concern for their targets canpreserve their own social desirability while simultaneously transmitting information that harmstheir target's reputation. Two online studies tested this theory by examining the prevalence andefficacy of concern motivations within gossip. Study 1 tested the prediction that women wouldassert greater concern relative to malicious motivations for gossiping by comparing male andfemale participants' perceptions of their own and others' social conversation motivations.Indeed, compared to men, women endorsed stronger concern motivations and lower reputationharmingmotivations when gossiping. Moreover, women were especially likely to assertbenevolent intentions when discussing same-sex peers compared to men, suggesting thesemotivations characterize women's gossip about same-sex rivals. Study 2 tested the competitiveefficacy of ostensible concern motivations. Male and female participants evaluated femalegossipers and their targets across three hypothetical gossip scenarios. The framing of thegossiper's statement was experimentally manipulated such that she delivered her informationwith concern, with malice, or neutrally. Consistent with predictions, gossip delivered withconcern enhanced perceptions of the gossiper's trustworthiness, interpersonal desirability, andromantic desirability compared to gossip delivered neutrally or maliciously. Taken together,these findings suggest women's belief in their prosocial motivations for gossiping is a sociallyadvantageous strategy for female intrasexual reputation competition.