Laypersons and scholars have conflicting views on the effect of status on gossip. Some argue that individuals with higher status may engage in less gossip than their lower-status counterparts because gossip is socially undesirable and associated with social costs, while others suggest that high status might engage in more gossip as it can be used to maintain/attain status and enhance relatedness with others. We draw on status and gossip literature to argue that the effect of status on gossip depends on one important characteristic of hierarchy — group status conflict. We also focus on one particular type — negative competence-related gossip, which refers to sharing negative information about a target’s abilities and skills at work with others (e.g., lack of competence). Specifically, we hypothesize that status enhances negative competence-related gossip only when people perceive a higher level of group status conflict. In a two-wave field study with a round-robin design, we show that when status conflict is perceived as higher, higher-status individuals engage in more negative competence-related gossip. The supplemental analyses suggest that status did not interact with group status conflicts in predicting other types of gossip. We discuss the implications of our research for both status and gossip research and practice.
