Pope Francis recently warned gossip 'fills the heart with bitterness and also poisons us'.
But
a new study suggests that gossiping may in fact be good for our
self-esteem because it allows us to compare ourselves to others.
Dutch
researchers have found hearing positive and negative gossip about
another individual boosts self-reflection and self-evaluation.
But they added that stories about others need to be treated with a 'critical attitude' about the impact it may have.
Elena
Martinescu at the University of Groningen said: 'Women who receive
negative gossip experience higher self-protection concerns possibly
because they believe they might experience a similar fate as the person
being the target of the gossip.
PSSST... DID YOU HEAR MEN ARE THE BIGGEST GOSSIPS?
Modern men cannot keep a secret - and are now worse gossips than women, according to a study.
Researchers
found that, contrary to the assumption that women can't wait to spill
the beans, it is men who are first to pass on confidential information.
Thanks
to social media, men no longer wait to see their mates in the pub and
typically share a secret within three hours, the study found. And almost
half of men admit to blabbing about a secret within minutes of first
being told about it.
In
comparison, women will keep it to themselves for at least three and a
half hours before passing it on. The study of 2,000 Britons s found that
the average man will keep a secret to themselves for around two hours
and 47 minutes - almost 40 minutes less than women.
More
than one in ten guys even admitted to blabbing someone's private secret
within 10 minutes or less of first finding out about it. Despite this,
92 per cent of men consider themselves to be good at keeping secrets.
A
spokesman for the release of The Fifth Estate on Blu-ray and DVD, which
commissioned the survey earlier this year said: 'These results seem to
show that if you want to keep a secret - don't trust a man.'
She
suggested rather than trying to block out gossip, we should 'accept
gossip as a natural part of our lives and receive it with a critical
attitude regarding the consequences it may have on ourselves and on
others.'
She
suggested rather than trying to block out gossip, we should 'accept
gossip as a natural part of our lives and receive it with a critical
attitude regarding the consequences it may have on ourselves and on
others.'
Hearing negative gossip may be flattering, because it suggests that other are worse off than us
The
study, published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, set out
to explore why gossip was so pervasive in society and why people wanted
to know about others' achievements and failures.
It explored the effect positive and negative gossip had on how the recipient evaluates him or herself.
The
study asked participants to recall an incident where they received
either positive or negative gossip about another individual and then
were asked questions to measure the self-improvement, self-promotion,
and self-protection value of the received gossip information.
Individuals
that received positive gossip had increased self-improvement value,
whereas negative gossip had increased self-promotion value and
self-protection concerns.
'For
example, hearing positive stories about others may be informative,
because they suggest ways to improve oneself,' Professor Martinescu
said.
'Hearing negative gossip may be flattering, because it suggests that others may function less well than we do.
'However,
negative gossip may also be threatening to the self, because it
suggests a malign social environment in which one may easily fall victim
to negative treatments.'
===============================================================================
No comments:
Post a Comment