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

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

The empowering potential of intergroup leadership: How intergroup leadership predicts psychological empowerment through intergroup relational identification and resources

As work increasingly transcends organizational boundaries, employee psychological empowerment benefits from resources provided by others outside of the employee's own team, department, or organization. These intergroup collaborations, however, may be inhibited by social identity and social categorization processes, so that the empowerment potential of these relations remains largely untapped. In this study (N = 213), we demonstrate that intergroup leadership is linked to employee psychological empowerment via intergroup relational identification and access to resources. In this way, this study demonstrates the empowering potential of intergroup leadership and intergroup relational identification for employees who collaborate across group barriers. We finish this paper by discussing the main implications for both empowerment and intergroup leadership theory, suggesting fruitful avenues for future research and highlighting the practical value for those who are motivated to increase psychological empowerment among boundary-spanning employees