Abstract
The present online-questionnaire study examined two fundamental social behaviors, social curiosity and gossip, and their interrelations in an English (n = 218) and a German sample (n = 152). Analyses showed that both samples believed that they are less gossipy but more curious than their peers. Multidimensional SEM of self and trait conceptions indicated that social curiosity and gossip are related constructs but with different patterns of social functions. Gossip appears to serve predominantly entertainment purposes whereas social curiosity appears to be more driven by a general interest in gathering information about how other people feel, think, and behave and the need to belong. Relationships to other personality traits (N, E, O) provided additional evidence for divergent validity. The needs for gathering and disseminating social information might represent two interlinked but different drives of cultural learning.
Highlights
Humans live in a complex social world, and building and using networks of relationships represent a central task [1]
To examine the discriminant validity of social curiosity and gossip lay conceptions, multiple regression analyses were computed with self-rated curiosity and self-rated gossip as dependent variable, respectively, as well as the trait measures for social curiosity (SCS-general, SCScovert) and for gossip (GFQ-Information, Gossip Function Questionnaire (GFQ)-Friendship, GFQEntertainment, GFQ-Control) as independent variables
A similar picture emerged for self-rated comparative gossip: Participants’ view of their own tendency to gossip was significantly related to the four GFQ-subscales, with adjusted R2 = .43, F(6,363) = 47.50, p
Summary
Humans live in a complex social world, and building and using networks of relationships represent a central task [1]. In order to function efficiently in a changing and complex social environment, humans require information about those around them [2]. Both social curiosity and the tendency to gossip are at the heart of social and cultural life [3,4,5]. Curiosity has been defined as the basic drive to learn, which sets the stage for development and learning ([6,7,8], but see [9]) Both social curiosity and the tendency to gossip might facilitate and direct learning and understanding of social information. Besides the apparent overlap between the two concepts, they may tap into different aspects of social life and may have different social functions
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