Gossip, Trust & Mistrust

Do you gossip? No, never. But I’ll tell you who does …

One of the principal characteristics of healthy interpersonal relationships is trust: our confidence in others’ good will, consistency, respectfulness, honesty, reliability, credibility, transparency, loyalty and other forms of behaving ethically and benevolently. Do you trust them?  is a question that reveals much about the quality of any relationship. [1]

Collaboration is easier where trust exists and more challenging where disrespect, deception … and other easily identified interferences are present. But gossip is an often overlooked contributor to mistrust – when instead of fostering understanding and trust, it involves sharing potentially harmful information with little regard for its negative effects.

In the interests of strengthening the interpersonal credibility and trustworthiness necessary for genuine collaboration, this discussion aims to facilitate reflection on our own part in practising, encouraging or failing to limit gossip. 

What is Gossip?

Gossip is not the mere imparting of a piece of information about others; it is a conversation about [their] likes, dispositions, the happenings in their lives, their reactions to those happenings, the range of reasons in light of which they conduct their life, and so on. [Cécile Fabre]

A gossiper’s intentions may be benign, to alert others to information regarded as essential for example.  However, they often involve reporting unsubstantiated, irrelevant, or private information about people who are not present and without their consent, in order to disparage or harm them; or to entertain, manipulate, or gain favour and in-group inclusion.

Gossip is not always false but even if it reports factual information … there’s a lot of truth that shouldn’t be passed around [2] and facts can be distorted by repetition, embellishments and increasingly inaccurate deviations.

Gossip can lead to unwholesome speculation, pessimism, cynicism and the creation or amplification of division among individuals or groups.

In many community, business, service organisations and personal relationships gossiping is to varying degrees, a common aspect of everyday conversation, in person or online.  This may involve:

• intentionally or unintentionally telling untruths about people
• making or reinforcing disapproving judgements about them
• generating or encouraging impotent awfulising of complaints [3]
• demonstrating a gossiper’s self-righteousness compared to others’ flaws
• making complaints which would more constructively and charitably be told directly to those complained about – often as an alternative to confronting differences because the gossiper fears interpersonal conflict [4]
• encouraging or facilitating potentially harmful gossip by being a willing listener or online recipient, without limiting or actively disengaging from it.

The ethics of gossip

From a moral perspective, is the gossip we engage in actively or indirectly, right or wrong? Does that depend on its purpose, form, extent, or nature of the parties’ relationship? If intended as mere conversation-making, relationships-building or reporting helpful information, is it acceptable? Under what conditions is it morally suspect?

The ethicist Cécile Fabre provides a useful primary guideline for distinguishing wrongful from harmless gossip:

While often gratifying, gossip is wrongful, at least in some of its forms, when and to the extent that it amounts to a particular kind of failure to treat others … with the concern and respect they are owed as persons; [and when it] is carried out with full awareness that those discussed would not consent to being treated in this way. [5]

In other words, much about the ethics of gossiping is revealed by our answers to these two questions:

• To what degree does the gossiper demonstrate the concern and respect due those spoken about?
• Would those gossiped about be comfortable with and consent to what is reported?

Within these guidelines, the question of whether or not the gossiper would be comfortable being similarly gossiped about, may be irrelevant.

Questions for self-reflection

What is your view of the principles suggested by Fabre’s ethical considerations?

What aspects of your own integrity (beliefs, values, principles, ideals) should guide your view of gossip?

What we choose to believe sometimes depends on snap-judgements arising from gossip and a desire to maintain relationships. How often are your opinions about people shaped by gossipers’ unverified preferences, aversions and judgements you accept as facts?

All too often we say what we hear others say. We think what we are told that we think. We see what we are permitted to see; worse, we see what we are told that we see. [Octavia Butler]

If you sometimes gossip in potentially harmful ways, accept, encourage or fail to interrupt others’ gossiping, how might those behaviours be affecting your trust in those people or their view of your trustworthiness?

How likely is it that people who gossip to you, will at other times gossip to others about you?

The corrosive nature of gossip  

When trust is broken it doesn’t always shatter. Sometimes trust fades away . . . You might not see an immediate reaction . . . What is lost may be irreplaceable. [Hania Saleem]

If you know me to be a gossiper your trust in me may be progressively damaged or destroyed. If I you gossip to me, I might initially be flattered that you take me into your confidence and circle of trustworthy acquaintances who should know and discuss these matters …  but eventually my trust in you may be similarly weakened. I may recognise and dislike the breach of ethics involved or make a reasonable assumption that you are just as likely to gossip about me elsewhere.

A few personal stories

1: Something had shifted for me in my work with colleagues on a new project. Because they gossiped disparagingly about people we knew, I became wary of disclosing non-essential personal information, doubting that confidences would be kept. My concerns about this when I raised them, were thought trivial: It’s harmless … It’s just between us … Everybody does it … It makes the world go round … These represented a common view of gossip’s place in relationships: If we all said to people’s faces what we say behind one another’s backs, society would be impossible. My own thinking resembled, What Paul says about Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter [6] so I reduced my conversational contributions to perfunctory levels until the project was completed.

2: Organisational leaders who engage my coaching services for their senior managers often assume that I should first be told (Just between you and me … ) personal information about those people that plainly invades privacy, and opinions of their performance which have not been reported to the individuals discussed, My trust in those leaders is significantly weakened. (What I do share with the boss or anyone else is firmly limited to whatever a client has asked or given me prior permission to reveal.)

3: A number of people in the helping professions assume in social settings that because of my profession it’s OK to reveal private information about clients without those parties’ permission. Mostly they only partially disclose those parties’ identities but sometimes that’s sufficient for me to join-the-dots and accurately identify them. Their unspoken assumption appears to be, It’s OK for we professionals to openly discuss these matters because … we’re professionals. They assume I’m on the same wavelength and act on that assumption as they demonstrate their own untrustworthiness.

4: Since leaving a relationship long ago I’ve heard, second-hand, various stories about my role in the breakup, constructed by people who have imagined and awfulised “the facts” without ever having discussed their perspectives with me. It’s been challenging to maintain my respect for those people and something I used to struggle with.

5: During a contract application, my interviewer incorrectly claimed I had an ulterior motive for applying. When I asked What makes you say that? he responded, Some people think you have. I immediately knew the identity of the individual who had spoken to him about me; someone I’d consulted in confidence but who knew nothing of my motivation. The occasion became charged with negative emotion; the interviewer had clearly decided I was untrustworthy and would not be offered the contract.

.    .    .

The nature of my careers has always necessitated a high degree of self-imposed confidence-keeping. Setting clear boundaries on inappropriate gossip is important to me. My … I’m not comfortable being told this … or Have you asked [person discussed] if it’s OK to tell me this? can trigger others’ discomfort but usually halts these breaches of trust. (Those things are difficult to express, of course, without developing the confidence that comes with accepting full agency.) They sometimes limit social discussions – and some relationships – but in ways I’m OK to live with.[7]

[1] See I don’t trust you.

[2] Frank A. Clark

[3] See It’s terrible: let’s co-ruminate.

[4] This recent book guides self-assessment and development of skills for confronting (directly facing up to) conflict.

[5] CécileFabre.

[6] Baruch Spinoza

[7] My book includes comprehensive treatment of the attitude management practices required for addressing conflict constructively.