What Did You Say She Was Like? Features of Gossip Associated with Hearsay Accuracy and Consensus
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Date
2018
Authors
Xu, Chenle
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
When gossiping about a person, how does one’s verbal responses affect the impression
formed by the gossipers? A previous study on hearsay reputation find that when two
gossipers gossiping about a target person, the hearsay accuracy about the target is low
but the consensus between the two gossipers is high (Costello & Srivastava, 2017). As
there has not been any research, to our knowledge, examining the factors that affect
hearsay accuracy and consensus, this study intends to fill in the gap by exploring verbal
responses as the potential factors. This study investigated the impacts of nine types of
verbal responses on the accuracy and consensus. We coded 114 gossip conversations
from the previous study (Costello & Srivastava, 2017) for nine specific responses and
eight global features of the conversations. We explored the extent to which these
specific and global features of gossip relate to consensus and accuracy in interpersonal
impressions, operationalized as profile agreements. By using profile correlations with
interpersonal ratings, the result suggests that certain types of responses may be
associated with accuracy and consensus; for example, offering evaluation as a type of
response seems to lead to a higher consensus between gossipers but cannot lead to an
accurate impression of the target. Although few of the correlations were statistically
significant, this project should still help to shed light on the conversational features
associated with accuracy and consensus of impressions formed through gossip.
Description
26 pages
Keywords
Gossip, Consensus, Accuracy
Citation
Xu, C. (2018). What Did You Say She Was Like? Features of Gossip Associated with Hearsay Accuracy and Consensus. Oregon Undergraduate Research Journal, 12(1). doi:10.5399/uo/ourj.12.1.4
10.5399/uo/ourj.12.1.4
10.5399/uo/ourj.12.1.4