Did you hear what she did to me? Female friendship victimization disclosures offer reputational advantages

Abstract

Although gossip is a common tactic of women's same-gender competition, it carries social costs. Overtly malicious gossipers are generally disliked, suggesting those who transmit gossip in more palatable forms may be favored as social partners. Four studies (N = 1653) tested the hypothesis that women's heightened sensitivity to transgressions in friendships prompts divulgence of those violations, allowing women to covertly (and perhaps unintentionally) transmit reputation-harming information about same-gender peers. In Study 1, women were more likely than men to question a same-gender friendship following violations denoting a friend's lack of commitment or kindness. In Study 2, women were more likely than men to report disclosing such friendship violations to others. In Study 3, first-person disclosures about one's own victimization were more trusted and approved than third-person disclosures about others' victimization, suggesting such statements are not readily recognized as gossip. In Study 4a, men and women reported that their female friends disclosed all types of friendship violations more frequently than did their male friends, but especially those surrounding commitment and replacement risk. In Study 4b, female perpetrators suffered worse reputational damage than did male perpetrators following divulgence of their poor treatment of same-gender friends. Taken together, these results reveal women are especially concerned about same-gender friends' interpersonal treatment, they disclose their perceived victimization to others, and such disclosures effectively impair same-gender peers' reputations. These patterns raise the possibility that the greater fragility of female (versus male) friendships results, in part, from this effective, yet covert form of intragender competition.