Why People Gossip: An Empirical Analysis of Social Motives, Antecedents, and Consequences

In 3 studies with student samples, we advance a social‐motivational approach to gossip. We developed the M otives to G ossip Q uestionnaire to distinguish negative influence, information gathering and validation, social enjoyment, and group protection as motives underlying gossip. Study 1 demonstrated that these motives can be distinguished empirically, and that the informational motive was the mo…