Getting a Grip on the Grapevine: Extension and Factor Structure of the Motives to Gossip Questionnaire

Gossip is condemned but also ubiquitous and thought to be essential for groups. This triggers the question of which motives explain gossip behavior. Hitherto, negative influence, social enjoyment, group protection, and information gathering and validation are established as motives to gossip. However, venting emotions—discussed as a potentially important motive—has been overlooked empirically. Furthermore, a lack of consensus about a definition of gossip may have affected previous conclusions about gossip motives. This study (N = 460) expands the Motives to Gossip Questionnaire (MGQ; Beersma and Van Kleef, 2012) by including a subscale measuring emotion venting, the desire to share emotionally evocative experiences. To validate the five motives to gossip across definitions, we asked participants to report the most recent gossip event they experienced, randomly assigning them to one of three instructions containing different gossip definitions commonly used in the literature: (1) broad instructions (sharing information about third parties who have no knowledge of the exchanged information), (2) narrower instructions (adding that the shared information must be evaluative), and (3) instructions using the word gossip. After participants recalled and described a gossip event, they completed the 25-item measure of five motives to gossip: social enjoyment, information gathering and validation, negative influence, group protection, and emotion venting. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the five-factor structure. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis supported full invariance across the three definition conditions. This indicates the Motives to Gossip Questionnaire successfully measures the five dimensions argued to motivate gossip and can be applied in research conceptualizing gossip both narrowly and broadly

The Mask of Sanity?:Leader Primary Psychopathy and the Effects of Leader Emotion Regulation Strategies on Followers

Individuals with psychopathic tendencies are sometimes quite capable of acquiring and maintaining leadership positions. One explanation could be that leaders with psychopathic personality profiles “hide behind the mask of sanity” by managing the public display of their emotions so that it positively affects other people's perceptions. We conducted a multisource team study (N = 306 teams) to investigate how leader primary psychopathy and emotion regulation strategies are related to follower perceptions of leader authenticity and follower trust in the leader. We found that leaders with stronger primary psychopathic tendencies would do better to adhere to a strategy of surface acting and refrain from deep acting in order to affect follower trust positively. Perceived authenticity explains the interactive effect of leader emotion regulation and psychopathy on follower trust. We also found that for leaders with higher levels of primary psychopathy deep acting is a less fruitful strategy because they lack the necessary empathic concern, and that the display of naturally felt emotions is a good strategy because it is positively associated with follower trust. We discuss whether the differential use of emotion regulation strategies might explain primary psychopaths’ upward mobility and how their use of emotion regulation strategies could help them to be perceived positively

Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it”: the combined effects of leader fear of losing power and competitive climate on leader self-serving behavior

Power is generally valued as it offers access to numerous tangible and intangible benefits. Fear of losing it might therefore initiate behavioral responses aimed at capitalizing on those benefits while it is still possible. Therefore, we propose that leaders’ fear of losing power may sway them to engage in self-serving behavior. Moreover, we argue that this effect is particularly strong in environments characterized by competition and rivalry, given that such environments foster opportunistic self-interested behavior. The results of two field studies among organizational leaders and their subordinates (one multi-source dyadic study and one multi-source team study) and a scenario experiment show that fear of power loss is positively related to leader self-serving behavior. As predicted, our results show that this relationship is stronger in more competitive organizational climates. We conclude that the potential effects of (anticipated) power loss deserve more research attention than previously awarded