Rumor and Gossip

Overview

Often used interchangeably, "rumor" and "gossip" as notions function differently. Rumor, also known by other terms such as "the grapevine" and "hearsay," differs from gossip in that it usually refers to the transmission of information about important events. A more scholarly description of rumor is that it is a form of public communication that carries private or specific hypotheses about how the world functions. Gossip, on the other hand, is more related to "chit chat" or "small talk" and refers to nonessential elements of people's daily activities. Rumor and gossip are both such ancient forms of communication, they could be called the oldest media in the world.

For many, rumors are ways of making sense of the world and that help people deal with uncertainty, ambiguity, or anxiety. Rumor transmits unsubstantiated information, that is, information that has not been proven nor refuted, whereas gossip may often have a known element of truth or fact. Another difference between rumor and gossip is that gossip moves faster and also dissolves faster than rumor. Rumor, in fact, may remain in circulation long after its usefulness has passed.

Furthermore, rumor tends to be motivated by the desire for clarification in the face of uncertainty, or to make meaning of something, whereas gossip is mainly fueled by status or ego imperatives. Gossip also tends to have more of an "inner-circle" factor than rumors, mostly because it is spread between people who have shared interests and a common context and history. Gossip is often spread through what is known as "small talk," usually perceived as something that is shared in moments of idleness. Nevertheless, gossip does have a purpose. According to an evolutionary psychology standpoint, theorists such as Roy Baumeister, Peter Salovey, and R. S. Wert have posited that gossip has played an important role in the evolution of social life and that it continues to play a role in social learning and organization. This does not mean that both rumor and gossip are not also problematic and often malicious, but it is important to analyze the reasons why they may have survived as a social form for so long.

The study of rumor is of great interest to many experts who study organizational and business communication. As stated before, rumors are a way to quell uncertainty. Some classic examples are how rumors in the business world can foretell job layoffs, company buyouts, or currency and stock devaluations. People seek to make meaning of pieces of unverified information. In many cases, of course, rumors may prove unfounded or people interpreted them wrongly. In general, however, rumors arise from the uncertainty that stems from myriad confused facts, some of which may turn out to be true. Other times, however, they prove wrong yet remain in the social consciousness in the form of an urban legend, that is, an improbable story circulated as true.

Social life is based on people being able to trust most of the information relayed to them, and people rarely seek to verify the information received from trusted others, be it a person—such as a coworker or relative—or an institution, such as a news outlet or state agency. In fact, rumors often come with a notion of a verification—typically "a friend of a friend" who has allegedly witnessed the event. The eyewitness is assumed to be real as well as a disinterested party just reporting an event.

As for the spreading of gossip, the motivations vary. A seminal study published by R. B. Stirling in 1956 found that the functions of gossip vary greatly across people and situations. Stirling identified around four major social functions of gossip, which are still considered valid. Gossip (1) facilitates information; (2) provides recreation; (3) creates group solidarity by strengthening control and sanctions, and (4) serves as an outlet for hostile aggression. Decades later, in his work Discreet Indiscretions: The Social Organization of Gossip (1993), Jörg Bergmann identified the rules and strategies that create gossip and the situations in which gossip arises. Bergmann also identified a relational structure of gossip as a triad: subject, gossip producer, and gossip recipient.

For Eric K. Foster, one of the most contemporary experts of gossip psychology, one of the paradoxes of gossip is that it is so persistent and ubiquitous despite social sanctions against it. In fact, people in all cultures seek to guard against charges of gossiping. Sacred texts warn against gossip and proscribe it. Most of the time, whatever the topic of gossip, the exchange of information is about absent third parties. In other words, it is about a person who cannot refute the information.

Gossip is by definition personal and can be used as aggression against others. On the other hand, rumors, which are less personalized, can also be deleterious to whole communities, as when rumors led some HIV/AIDs-positive African American groups to become fearful of accepting HIV/AIDS medication to treat their virus (Stadler, 2003) or cases in which rumors cause villagers to become fearful of having their children vaccinated against polio.

Many contemporary psychologists, however, argue that gossiping is a skill set. Being skillful at gossiping, they posit, entails being a good team player by sharing interesting information with others. Evolutionary scientists, who compare the behavior of primates to that of humans, have argued that gossip is a type of "grooming," a behavior that positions the sharer as somebody "in the know" and that furthers social bonding among groups. The trick, of course, is learning to distinguish such harmless gossip from that which is harmful to others.

Further Insights

The topic of rumor and gossip, their function and effects, has long been of interest to thinkers and experts. Many important studies began to appear in the twentieth century, especially during World War II, in which there is a surge in the interest in the psychology of rumor and in strategies of rumor control. It is important to bear in mind that historically, War Offices in times of war, were very concerned with the rumor mill and in knowing what information was being transmitted. It was in this environment, that a seminal study titled The Psychology of Rumor (1947) was published by psychologists Gordon W. Allport and Leo Postman, in which they explored how rumors spreads from one person to another, and the effect of rumors on national security and morale. They found that narrative elements such as scene descriptions change dramatically as the information moves across individuals.

Another surge of interest arose in the late 1960s, with the publication of sociologist Tamotsu Shibutani's Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor (1966). Shibutani was interested in the function of rumors, and describes them not as an irrational social trait, but as a way in which people cope with ambiguity under stress, that is, rumors are the result of the natural inclination of people searching for meaning in an uncertain or ambiguous situation. People, trying to make sense of confusing information, pool intellectual efforts out of which arise several hypotheses which are then transmitted in the form of rumors. Shibutani's book received many critiques, including the fact that the many cases used in his study seem haphazardly selected. Nevertheless, what remains is that his book contributed to the view that contradicts the idea that rumor-spreading is irrational; rumors are how people deal with ambiguous or unclear situations when institutional or formal channels of communication provide insufficient or confusing information. People will join forces to construct a interpretation of what is occurring and that sets off the rumor.

Sociologist Neil Smelser contributed to the theoretical work on rumors determining that, to be effective, rumors must arise in a scene of ambiguity or strain, but also, there must be specific structural conditions for it to thrive. Structural interpretations of social phenomena focus on the importance of social structures that enable the growth and spread of an event. According to this framework, structural analyses of rumors focus on structures and networks. For example, studies have been done on rumor in the context of money market, because these are based on rapid market movements and transfers through specific networks, in which fortunes can be made or lost based on snap judgements. In what is usually a highly volatile scene, rumors become very important. They also help support the system. Rumors of fortunes made, for example, reduce a sense of trepidation or uncertainty in financial transactions, no matter how unrealistic they may be on second thought.

Moreover, for Smelser, rumors help make sense of ambiguous situations by simplifying them, especially in situations of high stress. Smelser became known for his studies in mass hysteria or public panics. Panics result from generalized fearful beliefs that become exacerbated, transforming an ambiguous yet commonplace situation into a public threat. Smelser argued that, in fear-laden situations, rumors reduce ambiguity by fostering a sense of consensus and stability. Although such rumors may produce fear, they also tend to provide predictability and a certain structure or certainty.

Ralph Rosnow and Gary Fine published their seminal book Rumors and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay in 1976, in which they posit that rumors and gossip are social transactions that serve as ways to exchange information and other resources. Rosnow and Fine take a contrary view to Shibutani, arguing that these rumors are distortions occurring in a serial transmission. They agree with other experts in that rumors and gossip are fueled by both ambiguity and anxiety. To illustrate how they work together, they use the example of how synapses and neurons work, stating that anxiety is the chemical that transfers excitement from one neuron to the next, and ambiguity the energy that fuels the neuron. They supported their conclusions with empirical evidence, although critics have argued that they did not prove that the transmission of rumors results in a decrease in anxiety. One of Rosnow and Fine's major contributions is a categorization of the stages of rumor, which according to them, passes from birth to adventures to, ultimately, its death.

In the early 1990s, Jean-Noel Kapferer published Rumors: Uses, Interpretations and Images, in which he argued that even before the existence of modern media such as radios and television, rumors were powerful transmissions capable of setting off civil unrest and wars, and gossip capable of destroying reputations and driving people to despair. For Kapferer, there is a logic to rumors, which includes mechanisms that can be studied and proven. Because they are such an inherent part of everyday life, however, it is not possible to study their societal role separate from their everyday life context. Kapferer explains that rumors are not spread for amusement. Their intention is to convince people of a piece of information that portends to be true or, at least, possible. Rumors are important, as they often carry news about meaningful events.

In the twenty-first century, much of what is studied of gossip and rumors pertains not only to their roles in organizational scenarios, but also to their development and impact in new media or Internet contexts.

Issues

Among the issues of concern in relation to rumor and gossip, two are of keen interest to experts: their roles in organizations and their roles as a channel of slander or harmful gossip. There is a large body of research published on the psychology of gossip and rumor in daily life, as well as its effect on organizations.

People tend to spread gossip for a variety of reasons: to feel accepted, to get attention, to gain power or exact revenge, or to make somebody else toe the line. One of the environments in which gossip proliferates the most is the workplace. Many studies suggest that the workplace itself seems to dilute much of the social stigma of gossip as an unsavory type of interaction. In the workplace, people are moving around space in the context of work, often carrying documents, portfolios, or briefcases, so that it contextualizes gossip within the greater framework of productivity. Moreover, the activity of gossip is often interpreted as somehow separate from work; that is, it is not seen as if it is detracting from work. Experts have explained that workplace gossip is so prevalent, in large part, because it provides workers with the opportunity of breaking with the work routine to participate in informal pleasantries. Nevertheless, it remains that most of this gossip –as well as workplace rumors, which pertain more to the organization and less to its people—relate to workplace people and events and, because it often reflects workplace morale and carries truthful information, experts remain interested in analyzing it in the organizational context.

Social scientists posit that gossip plays the role of supporting social norms and controlling behavior. In other words, gossip, as opposed to rumors, controls people by ensuring that they keep in line. This is true outside of the organization as well as within. In an organization, the grapevine, the informal circulation of rumors and gossip, serves as an internal channel of communication for non-official information. It provides commentary and additional information to the formal internal channels of communication. The rumor grapevine tends to surge when workers experience ambiguity, uncertainty, fear, or anger. Not all rumors are negative. They may convey hopeful expectations, such as upcoming raises and promotions. Or they may convey, on the other hand, the possibility of bankruptcy or layoffs. Not surprisingly, management tends to dislike the grapevine due to concerns about potentially seditious nature of the information shared. Experts point out, however, that the more open and transparent an organizational communications system is, the less likelihood there is of rampant rumors (Kramer, 2016).

Contrary to most cases of rumor, gossip is a self-centered behavior and has a greater potential of inflicting personal harm. Experts have found that gossip can become addictive, especially when it is used as a mechanism of aggression. This is the case when gossip serves as an emotional vent for negative emotions. Gossip may also serve to improve a person's status and self-esteem, positioning him or her as somebody with privileged information and as an individual superior to others. Although some gossip may be harmless, spreading slanderous gossip is a particularly harmful interaction.

Slander is gossip that involves conveying falsehoods about others that smear their reputation, an action also known as "defamation" and "character assassination." Paradoxically, engaging in this kind of exchange may give people something to connect about, that is, it allows people to bond over the enjoyment of the titillating information exchanged. People who share the gossip become an "in group" which coalesces from joining forces against the subject of gossip. Unfortunately, such information gets increasingly distorted as it is transmitted from one individual to another; it may ruin reputations and, with the contemporary prevalence of social media, lead to serious psychological harm and even endangerment of the integrity of the victim. Slander spread through social media has led people to experience feelings of depression and despair as well as social ostracism. Also called social media defamation, social media slander has become so commonplace that attorneys in the 2020s specialize in lawsuits regarding defamation of character because of social media posts.

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