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Gossip can ruin lives! But could it also improve them?
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Hey guys, Tara here for DNews, and if sites like Facebook and Twitter have taught us anything, it's that people love to gossip.
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It's human nature! We've always been taught that's a bad thing, and that we shouldn't do it.
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But new research shows that may not be the case.
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A study published this week in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin finds that hearing gossip may actually help us adapt to our social environments,
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allowing us to self-improve and expose potential threats.
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For their study, a team of researchers from the Netherlands asked a group of participants to recall an incident where they had received either positive or negative gossip about someone else.
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Then they were asked to measure how that gossip had affected their levels of self-improvement, self-promotion, and self-protection.
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What they discovered is that hearing positive gossip tends to lead to self-improvement.
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In the sense that when we hear something great about someone else, it indirectly suggests ways that we can improve upon ourselves.
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Makes sense.
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But what about negative gossip? How does that affect us?
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Well, according to their findings, negative gossip actually produces a two-fold reaction.
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On the one hand, it increases our self-promotion because in a weird Schadenfreude kind of way, it can be kind of flattering to know that we're doing better than other people.
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At the same time though, it also increases our self-protection concerns because it signifies that we could also potentially be affected by whatever negative treatments befell the person we're gossiping about.
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Obviously, these aren't hard-and-fast guidelines, and people react differently to gossip, depending on their personality,
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which is why researchers conducted another part to this study where they assigned participants one of two different personalities:
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a sales agent who uses their knowledge and skills to get ahead,
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or a sales agent who tramples over others to demonstrate their superiority.
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In this example, they found that the people who really cared about improving their job performance through knowledge and skills, were more likely to learn from positive gossip,
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whereas those who trampled over others to get ahead, typically felt threatened when hearing good news about someone else.
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So, how good of a person you are is clearly a factor here. But there are also differences among genders.
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Women, for example, tend to be more fearful when they hear negative gossip about someone else because they're afraid that it could happen to them, too.
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Men, not so much.
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In fact, men tended to be more fearful of positive gossip because it was seen as a potential threat.
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No matter how you react, it seems at least one thing is clear: gossip causes everyone to pause and self-reflect,
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and in some cases, that reflection can and does lead to self-improvement.
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Speaking of things to be fearful of, I want to let you guys know that we recently shot a TestTube episode about cyberbullying and whether or not that is actually illegal.
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If you've been on the Internet lately then you know this is a huge hot-button issue,
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so if you're interested in knowing more about it, I implore you to check out that episode at youtube.com/testtubenetwork.
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In the meantime, if you guys have any questions, comments, fun gossip to share as long as it's anonymous,
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just leave it in the comments below. Otherwise, thanks for watching.