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Gossip and gender differences: a content analysis approach
Abstract
In this study, we attempt to evaluate gender-based differences in gossiping habits, subjects and sentiments. In order to do so, a mixed methods research approach comprising qualitative and quantitative analyses was employed. Questionnaires were filled out by 2230 participants, and an open question format was used, with participants imagining a scenario in which they are invited to describe to a friend, a person they had just met. Our findings suggest that, quantitatively speaking, women and men engage in the same amount of gossiping activity. Nevertheless, gender-based differences are apparent in the subject of gossip. Women gossip more about social relationships and physical appearance than men. It was also found that women's gossip is more positive than men's. Qualitative analysis of the data provides a more complex picture. For example, while women gossip more about physical appearance than men, their descriptions tend to be couched in positive terms, although they are deployed to emphasize other salient negative traits. This research therefore contributes to the refutation of gender-based stereotypes about gossiping.
... The typology of gossip is the categorization of actors in the reality of gossiping based on the gossip actors (singular or plural) on the level of complexity of reason (singular or plural) and goals (singular or plural). The variety of reasons and purposes for gossiping is the basis for constructing a gossip typology [2], [9]. The results of reducing the existing aspects of the reasons and purposes of gossiping vary widely, ranging from 1 reason and purpose (singular reason & purpose) to 8 reasons and purposes (plural reasons & purposes). ...
... These four types of gossip actors can be observed in the daily life world in the social system that the actors who actualize (act) each of these types always exist [2], [10], [11]. The larger the social system members, the more gossip moments are actualized by the actors. ...
... Exclusive AG (AGE) performs gossiping with the reasons and purposes of gossiping with a high level of complexity [2]. This type of actor is diligent, intensive and detailed in seeking information as gossip material. ...
... This perception is largely attributed to women being more actively involved in informal communication on topics that are not work-related. However, Eckhaus and Ben-Hador (2017 ) found that the level of gossip engagement amongst men and women is the same though women gossip more positively in comparison to men. The study by Eckhaus and Ben-Hador (2017 ) agrees that women gossip more about social subjects such as relationships. ...
... However, Eckhaus and Ben-Hador (2017 ) found that the level of gossip engagement amongst men and women is the same though women gossip more positively in comparison to men. The study by Eckhaus and Ben-Hador (2017 ) agrees that women gossip more about social subjects such as relationships. The study by Watson (2012 ) found that the relationship between gossip and friendship was found to be stronger in men than in women, which means that men are more likely to engage in gossip with their friends. ...
... This perception was largely attributed to women being more actively involved in informal communication on topics that were not work-related. These findings differ from the findings from a study by Eckhaus and Ben-Hador (2017 ) who found that the level of gossip engagement amongst men and women is the same though the women gossip more positively in comparison to men. Both the current findings and the study by Eckhaus and Ben-Hador (2017 ) agree that women gossip more about social subjects such as relationships. ...
This chapter focuses on dog trainers as a marginalised group in exploring office gossip in their setting, within a specific organisation and how this group of employees work and rework their identities. The dog training unit forms an integral part of the company under investigation and employees working in this area are viewed as being marginalised employees compared to staff working in other units of the organisation. Not much research has been conducted in this area to ascertain how dog trainers who work outdoors and not in an office environment engage in workplace gossip. The chapter will provide an overview of a dog unit within an organisation. The relationship between a dog and a trainer will be focussed on. A qualitative study was conducted where results were obtained from dog trainers, the human resource manager as well as the dog trainers’ supervisors to ascertain the impact of office gossip on productivity and happiness within the workplace. The results of the study will be discussed and insights will be provided on how dog trainers handle office gossip.
... Our work integrates insights from gender role stereotypes and role congruity theory (e.g., Eagly, 1987) with research on gender differences in moral reasoning (Friesdorf et al., 2015) to Negative workplace gossip about a peer understand the differences between men and women in terms of their judgments of the gossip sender's morality. As such, we move beyond comparisons between women and men in terms of the frequency (Robbins & Karan, 2020) and subject of their gossip (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019), or gossip about same-sex others (McAndrew et al., 2007). Rather, we build on this ongoing conversation about workplace gossip and the sender's gender (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019), and add important insights into how individual responses to receiving negative workplace gossip vary based on the gender of the recipient. ...
... As such, we move beyond comparisons between women and men in terms of the frequency (Robbins & Karan, 2020) and subject of their gossip (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019), or gossip about same-sex others (McAndrew et al., 2007). Rather, we build on this ongoing conversation about workplace gossip and the sender's gender (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019), and add important insights into how individual responses to receiving negative workplace gossip vary based on the gender of the recipient. Third, our research advances our understanding of the social consequences for the gossip sender by examining the recipients' behavioral responses. ...
... Importantly, our study identifies gender as a boundary condition on how negative gossip shapes the recipients' responses to the sender. Previous research has mainly focused on gender differences in the frequency and type of gossip (e.g., Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019;Michelson & Mouly, 2000;Nevo et al., 1993). To our knowledge, no research to date has modeled the gossip recipient's gender as a moderator. ...
Unlabelled:
We conducted three studies to examine how the recipients of negative workplace gossip judge the gossip sender's morality and how they respond behaviorally. Study 1 provided experimental evidence that gossip recipients perceive senders as low in morality, with female recipients rating the sender's morality more negatively than male recipients. In a follow-up experiment (Study 2), we further found that perceived low morality translates into behavioral responses in the form of career-related sanctions by the recipient on the gossip sender. A critical incident study (Study 3) enhanced the external validity and extended the moderated mediation model by showing that gossip recipients also penalize senders with social exclusion. We discuss the implications for practice and research on negative workplace gossip, gender differences in attributions of morality, and gossip recipients' behavioral responses.
Supplementary information:
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10551-023-05355-7.
... Gossip is almost unavoidable in the real-world social network (Grosser et al., 2012;Eckhaus et al., 2019), deemed as a far-reaching informal channel of information exchange aside from the communication of formal information within the organization (Wu et al., 2018;Dores Cruz et al., 2021). Workplace gossip is defined as the informal, evaluative discussion about the colleagues or leaders who are absent (Ellwardt et al., 2012c;Eckhaus et al., 2019). ...
... Gossip is almost unavoidable in the real-world social network (Grosser et al., 2012;Eckhaus et al., 2019), deemed as a far-reaching informal channel of information exchange aside from the communication of formal information within the organization (Wu et al., 2018;Dores Cruz et al., 2021). Workplace gossip is defined as the informal, evaluative discussion about the colleagues or leaders who are absent (Ellwardt et al., 2012c;Eckhaus et al., 2019). The subjects involved in workplace gossip include the disseminator, the listener, and the target of gossip (Foster 2004;Estévez et al., 2022). ...
... Previous studies demonstrated that gender and educational degree could make a difference to individual innovative behavior, and that individual attitude toward gossip would change with the increase in age (Wu et al., 2018;Eckhaus et al., 2019). Therefore, this investigation took respondent's gender, age, and educational degree as the control variables. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the role of positive workplace gossip (PWG) in employee innovative behavior, whereby a mediating effect of employee loyalty is proposed in this relationship. The moderating effect of organizational trust (OT) is also examined on the indirect of PWG on employee innovative behavior through employee loyalty.
Design/methodology/approach
This research used a survey data of 327 employees from the enterprises selected from the Pearl River and Yangtze River Delta region of China. Based on the literature review, five main hypotheses were formulated and explored. The SPSS-Process Macro Plugin was used to analyze the hypothesized model.
Findings
Results show there is a positive and significant relationship between PWG and employee innovative behavior. This study also confirm that employee loyalty is an intervening variable and OT as a moderator.
Practical implications
Organizations should pay more attention to workplace gossip phenomena, encourage employees to take appropriate part in positive workplace gossip and to communicate positive information about other colleagues, and build an inclusive, open, sincere, and interdependent platform in the organization.
Originality/value
Employee innovative behavior plays an essential role in organization’s survival and development. Few studies have investigated PWG may promote employee innovative behavior through employee loyalty. The data, model, and findings of this research address the gap and complement the current state of knowledge.
... Our work integrates insights from gender role stereotypes and role congruity theory (e.g., Eagly, 1987) with research on gender differences in moral reasoning (Friesdorf et al., 2015) to Negative workplace gossip about a peer understand the differences between men and women in terms of their judgments of the gossip sender's morality. As such, we move beyond comparisons between women and men in terms of the frequency (Robbins & Karan, 2020) and subject of their gossip (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019), or gossip about same-sex others (McAndrew et al., 2007). Rather, we build on this ongoing conversation about workplace gossip and the sender's gender (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019), and add important insights into how individual responses to receiving negative workplace gossip vary based on the gender of the recipient. ...
... As such, we move beyond comparisons between women and men in terms of the frequency (Robbins & Karan, 2020) and subject of their gossip (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019), or gossip about same-sex others (McAndrew et al., 2007). Rather, we build on this ongoing conversation about workplace gossip and the sender's gender (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019), and add important insights into how individual responses to receiving negative workplace gossip vary based on the gender of the recipient. Third, our research advances our understanding of the social consequences for the gossip sender by examining the recipients' behavioral responses. ...
... Importantly, our study identifies gender as a boundary condition on how negative gossip shapes the recipients' responses to the sender. Previous research has mainly focused on gender differences in the frequency and type of gossip (e.g., Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019;Michelson & Mouly, 2000;Nevo et al., 1993). To our knowledge, no research to date has modeled the gossip recipient's gender as a moderator. ...
... On the one hand, individuals oppose gossip and do not want to be perceived as gossipers, but on the other hand, they do gossip and to a large extent. Another study indicates that this ambivalence is stronger among men than among women (Eckhaus and Ben-Hador, 2019). ...
... Gossip, or talking about others in their absence, is one of the most common human verbal activities across societies (Ellwardt, 2011). It usually includes an evaluation of a third person (Foster, 2004) and is important in human interaction because it can reflect personal beliefs about a situation or person (Eckhaus and Ben-Hador, 2019). Noon and Delbridge (1993) extend this definition to a process of unofficial communication that includes information on the social environment. ...
... As a result, they will not contribute to the organization. The connection between gossip and personal SC might also be affected by the sentiment and content of the gossip (Eckhaus and Ben-Hador, 2019). If the gossip is evil, it might enhance the disadvantages of the personal SC and harm the unity and coherence of the organizational groups. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to understand better the organizational social capital (SC) levels and their impact on organizations by focusing on personal SC and intra-organizational SC as well as their different connections to organizational gossip and employee performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Participants in a field study included 617 employees from five Israeli organizations in the field of aviation and shipping. Levels of personal SC, intra-organizational SC, gossip and self-evaluated performance were measured, and connections between them detected.
Findings
The results indicate that intra-organizational SC is positively connected to employee performance, while personal SC is positively linked to gossip. Personal SC also leads to performance with the mediation of intra-organizational SC, although gossip was not found to be connected to performance.
Originality/value
The contributions of this study are both conceptual and practical. The distinction between organizational SC levels is refined, improving organizational research accuracy and facilitating a better grasp of the connections between SC and other variables. The scant research on organizational gossip has been expanded. From a practical perspective, clarification of the link between organizational SC and performance can be beneficial to employees and organizations.
... Gossip is and has always been a very widespread human activity [21]. Gossip has many definitions; for example, an informal conversation that is typically evaluative [22] about an absent third person or persons [23]. Gossip is an important means of communication and has multiple functions in the social life of human beings such as acquiring knowledge about the social environment [24] and strengthening social relations [25]. ...
... In the age of globalization business processes are constantly changing and improving [46][47][48], along with learning skills [49] and the need to better understand and analyze data. We used TEXTIMUS, a software developed for supporting text mining and analysis [23,50]. In the first module, we used generated n-gram frequencies [51,52], referring to a contiguous sequence of n words from a given sequence of text. ...
... Finally, gossip negatively affects the intention to volunteer (PRO) (H5). Since gender may impact gossip [23] and pro-social [62] tendencies, in the next stage, we extended the model to control for gender. The extended model also showed a good fit: v2/df = 1.35, p > .05, ...
Volunteerism is pro-social behavior that positively affects both society and the volunteers themselves. Gossip is also a pro-social behavior, but usually perceived as negative. This research focuses on the effect of pro-social attitudes, age, and gossip on pro-social behavior, and specifically on the intention to volunteer.
... 63% of male employees never or rarely be victims or a part of gossip closely associated with their office work, whereas 58% of females never engaged in office job-related gossip. Our findings contradict the previous studies by Eyal and Batia (2019), and Van (2005), who established that gossip is a universal phenomenon and both women and men engage in the same amount of gossiping activity of all ages. The observed difference might be due to the nature of the participants, where the earlier study covers employees from all the industries, and this study focuses on the healthcare and higher education sectors. ...
... Dunbar et al. (1997) observed that males spent 55% of conversation time and female participants spent 67% of conversation time on the discussion of socially relevant topics. Likewise, earlier studies have indicated a gender difference concerning the relevance of the topic of discussion, where women gossip more about social relationships and physical appearance than men (Eyal & Batia, 2019). In conformity with our study, several other shreds of evidence also produce consistent results, demonstrating that, in general, women folk spend more time gossiping than male (Almenara-Niebla et al., 2020;Tekin, 2012;Dunbar et al., 1997). ...
Office gossip is a social phenomenon that affects people's thoughts, actions, and behaviors. It can have both positive and negative impacts on employees and organizations. This chapter focuses on revealing the hidden perceptions of higher education and healthcare sector employees about office gossip in Saudi Arabia. A cross-sectional research design was adopted to study how diverse employee groups view gossip regarding gender, nationality, and the type of industry they belong to. Most of the Saudi Arabian workforce never or rarely gossip on matters related to office and did not enjoy gossiping either as a victim or a part of it. Participants expressed that less than 20% of gossip at the workplace is fact-based. The majority of the participants never or rarely have an idle talk about their colleagues’ physical appearance and clothes/dress; however, less than 30% of office gossip revolved around the growth and accomplishments of co-workers, their work performance, and academic qualifications and salary. There is no significant association between gender and nationality regarding office gossip, where females are more likely to gossip than males, and Saudi nationals are less involved in gossip than non-Saudi employees. Further, higher education and healthcare sector employees both perceive office gossip similarly.
... Previous studies supported this statement as findings revealed that women had a higher tendency to gossip than men [7,9]. Moreover, recent research found that not only women were more likely to gossip than men, but they also were more positive when gossiping [8]. As women friendship run deeper than men friendship, gossip in female group can provide more negative effects than males" gossip particularly gossiping about physical appearance [7]. ...
... Eckhaus and Ben-Hador [8] measured gender differences in gossiping habits, subjects, and attitudes by using a mixed methodology. A survey questionnaire was employed to collect data from samples by using an open question format, which allowed respondents to imagine gossiping scenario. ...
The aim of this present study was to explore gossip tendency of Thai students in one specific university in Bangkok, Thailand, and to compare gender and origin differences in tendency to gossip. A total sample of 60 undergraduate students was gathered for data collection through a survey questionnaire. A modified version of the Tendency to Gossip Questionnaire (Thai version) was utilized to measure gossip tendency of participants in this study. Results showed that this group of students seldom gossiped other people as the total mean score of tendency to gossip was 3.16. Among four tendency to gossip subscales, physical appearance was reported as the highest mean score of tendency to gossip while sublimated gossip was rated as the lowest mean score. In addition, findings revealed a significant difference in gossip tendency between males and females, which females had a higher score on an overall gossip tendency than males. However, this study did not find significant difference in tendency to gossip in terms of people with different places of origin.
... In order to enable and maximize the potential of the responses, open-ended questions were used in our survey, which do not inhibit responses (Roberts et al., 2014) and allow new ideas and at times even creative solutions. Content analysis often provides valuable insights Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2017), as well as providing cues for detecting problems within organizations (Eckhaus & Sheaffer, 2018c;Eckhaus, Taussig, & Ben-Hador, 2018;. The teaching evaluation survey the students are given included two parts, where the first was a general score for the lecturer, and the second consisted of free comments. ...
... The management's attitude toward the teaching surveys is excessive and unrealistic Categories were binary coded, i.e., texts were tagged as 0 (does not belong to the category) or 1 (belongs to the category) (Eckhaus & Sheaffer, 2018b). We employed a mixed methods design (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2017), which enables the strengths of both qualitative and empirical methods to complement each other. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to test the model's goodness-of-fit (Eckhaus, 2019;Eckhaus & Sheaffer, 2018a). ...
It is commonly thought that the promotion of faculty members is affected by their research performance. The current study is unique in examining how academic faculty members perceive the harm or damage to academic appointment and promotion processes, as a direct effect of student evaluations as manifested in teaching surveys. One hundred eighty two questionnaires were collected from senior faculty members at academic institutions. Most respondents were from three institutions: Ariel University, Ben Gurion University, and the Jezreel Valley College. Qualitative and statistical research tools were utilized, with the goal of forming a model reflecting the effect of the harm to academic appointment and promotion processes, as perceived by faculty members. The research findings show that the lecturers find an association that causes harm to their promotion processes as a result of student evaluations. Assuming that students' voices and their opinion of teaching are important – the question is how should these evaluations be treated within promotion and appointment processes: what and whom do they indicate? Do they constitute a reliable managerial tool with which it is possible to work as a foundation for promotion and appointment processes – or should other tools be developed, unrelated to students' opinions?
... This is because 1) gossip represents a risky threat to one's reputation, and men tend to be more risk-tolerant (Byrnes et al., 1999), and 2) because women are thought to be more interdependent and communally oriented than men (Cross & Madson, 1997;Eagly, 2009), and thus may be more averse to gossip's potentially relationship-damaging aspects. This possibility is indirectly supported by findings that when people do gossip, women's gossip tends to be more positive than men's (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019). Gossip may be especially useful as a form of coalition building/indirectaggression especially for women (e.g., Hess, 2017;McAndrew, 2014). ...
... This set of prohibitions conforms with highly gendered and age-related social hierarchies between males and females, parents and children, and the elderly and the young, with the expectation that the latter in each case speak particularly "nicely"-that is, submissively-to and about the former. These social hierarchies implicate Haredi women, similar to women in other cultural contexts (Besnier 2009;Eckhaus and Ben-Hador 2019;Rysman 1977), in gendered devaluations of their talk, as well as in ready-made accusations of engaging in idle gossip (e.g., Fader 2009:143, 202;Glinert, Loewenthal, and Goldblatt 2003). ...
... Individual differences are reported to predict attitudes towards gossip and the tendency to gossip [78]. In particular, age and gender could predict organisational gossip [9,79,80], and were controlled in the tests conducted with both samples. The correlation matrix of means, standard deviations, and scale reliability for all variables is given in Tables 1 and 2. ...
According to the trait activation theory (TAT), personality characteristics are dormant until contextual elements stir them into action. Personality traits are expected to be activated in the context of abusive supervision. From this perspective, our paper examines whether abusive supervision affects organisational gossiping behaviour through the dark triad. To this end, this study examines the mediating effects of the dark triad on the relationship between abusive supervision and organisational gossip based on cross-sectional data gathered from two separate samples. Using the results from structural equation modelling, it is evident that abusive supervision activates the dark triad, and its context influences organisational gossip in line with the TAT. In addition, our results show that abusive supervision positively affects gossip for information gathering and relationship building, with the dark triad proving to be completely mediating. This finding implies that abusive supervision is a contextual factor, and as such, behaviours such as consistent ill treatment and non-violent, verbal or non-verbal hostile acts will have long-term and lasting effects on organisational communication in many organisations. This study offers significant policy implications concerning behavioural issues within education-centred organisations.
... Research on gossip in spontaneous conversations is very much needed to answer questions about its true nature. Studies on gossip in natural settings are based on anthropological observations (Gluckman, 1963;Levin & Arluke, 1985;Besnier, 2009;Emler, 1994;Dunbar et al., 1997), but there have been a few attempts to take account of gossip in transcribed conversations (Slade, 1997;Foster, 2004;Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019;Robbins & Karan, 2020;Szabó et al., 2021). ...
Gossip – talking about relevant others in their absence – is believed to constitute a large part of informal communication. The perception of the prevalence of gossip implies that it can be unambiguously identified and distinguished from other topics in spontaneous conversation. Its distinctiveness may be justified by multiple theoretical perspectives, including one that describes in-group gossip as an informal device for enforcing norms and punishing norm violators, and another that claims that gossip is used to release frustration and communicate envy. If the ultimate reason for gossip is to facilitate social bonding between the sender and the receiver, however, this would not differentiate gossip from other conversational topics that provide social enjoyment, such as entertainment and food. In a novel contribution, we explore the topics included in a corpus containing 550 hours of unfiltered spontaneous conversation and identify using LDA topic modeling whether some topics are unambiguously prominent in in-group gossip. The explorative approach is integrated with the manual annotation of instances of gossip across the entire corpus. We identified coherent topics of in-group gossip that are clearly different from those of small talk and storytelling. Our analysis finds that feelings, intentions, and opinions are frequently expressed in in-group gossip, more than habits, manners, and behavior. In-group gossip topics are characterized by more words associated with anger, in line with theoretical perspectives that attribute the motives of norm enhancement and punishment or frustration and envy to gossip.
... We propose that gossiping negatively about the supervisor is likely to heighten gossipers' image maintenance concerns for two reasons. First, gossiping negatively about the supervisor is often construed as immoral behavior because it invades the target supervisors' privacy and harms their reputation (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019;Peters & Kashima, 2015). Given that supervisors occupy a higher hierarchical position than gossipers, sharing negative gossip about the supervisor violates the social standard of showing respect to those with greater authority (Haidt et al., 2004). ...
Although negative gossip is ubiquitous in the workplace, we know little about how negatively gossiping about the supervisor—who occupies a higher hierarchical position in the organization—influences gossipers themselves. To address this question, we draw on the conservation of resources theory to account for the resource‐consuming and resource‐generating impact of negative gossip about the supervisor on gossipers’ work engagement. Findings from three experience sampling studies show that negative gossip about the supervisor is a double‐edged sword for gossipers that seems to do more harm than good to their work engagement. On the one hand, spreading negative gossip about the supervisor evokes the resource‐consuming mechanism of image maintenance concerns, which impairs gossipers’ work engagement, especially when perceived organizational politics is higher. On the other hand, engaging in such gossip elicits the resource‐generating mechanism of sense of power, which only improves work engagement in Study 3 but not in Studies 1 and 2; contrary to our expectation, this effect is unaffected by perceived organizational politics. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical contributions of our research.
... Network studies show gender differences in personal offline and online social network formation [Benenson, 1990;Igarashi, Takai, Yoshida, 2005]. For example, women usually have smaller social networks than men [McMillan, Felmlee, Osgood, 2018] and they tend to gossip more about physical appearance [Eckhaus, Ben-Hador, 2019]. Differences in age, race, minoritized status, socio-economic status and mental health may also affect how people build networks and exchange information and should be taken into account. ...
Несмотря на большое количество работ, посвященных изучению моральных паник, практически отсутствуют исследования, касающиеся анализа эффекта социального окружения в их распространении. Эта статья вносит вклад в решение данной проблемы, предлагая методологический подход, который может быть использован при изучении распространения моральных паник в ходе межиндивидуальной коммуникации. Основанный на сочетании анализа эго-сетей и биографических интервью, этот подход позволяет показать как индивидуальные взаимодействия с членами социального окружения могут воздействовать на вовлеченность человека в моральную панику. Возможности этой методологии демонстрируются на примере моральной паники относительно ожирения. Женщины про-ана блогеры рассматриваются как моральные паникеры, которые создают моральную панику вокруг избавления от «лишнего» веса. Анализ проводится на основе 50 биографических интервью и публичных онлайн дневников русскоязычных женщин, которые причисляют себя к про-ана культуре и ведут о ней блоги в социальной сети «ВКонтакте». Результаты обсуждаются в связи с исследованиями моральной паники относительно ожирения, а также литературой, посвященной изучению распространения моральных паник.
... But it is also associated with malice, envy, and falsehood. Gossip is also often conjured as negative, judgmental, superficial speculative, and defamatory (Eckhaus and Ben-Hador 2019). ...
... Although a recent meta-analysis suggests males are more likely than females to be both perpetrators and victims of cyberbullying (Smith, López-Castro, Robinson, & Görzig, 2019), this examination did not break down prevalence rates by perpetrator/ victim gender and thus, additional research is needed to adjudicate whether females preferentially target females online. Across cultures, women report being more inclined to gossip than men, but particularly about social topics and physical appearance (Davis, Dufort, Desrochers, Vaillancourt, & Arnocky, 2018;Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019;Nevo, Nevo, & Derech-Zehavi, 1993;Watson, 2012). Compared to men, women feel more compelled to respond to bothersome behavior with retaliatory gossip (Hess & Hagen 2006b) and are more willing to share gossip with same-sex peers (McAndrew, Bell, & Garcia, 2007). ...
Investigations of women’s same-sex relationships present a paradoxical pattern, with women generally disliking competition, yet also exhibiting signs of intrasexual rivalry. The current article leverages the historical challenges faced by female ancestors to understand modern women’s same-sex relationships. Across history, women were largely denied independent access to resources, often depending on male partners’ provisioning to support themselves and their children. Same-sex peers thus became women’s primary romantic rivals in competing to attract and retain relationships with the limited partners able and willing to invest. Modern women show signs of this competition, disliking and aggressing against those who threaten their romantic prospects, targeting especially physically attractive and sexually uninhibited peers. However, women also rely on one another for aid, information, and support. As most social groups were patrilocal across history, upon marriage, women left their families to reside with their husbands. Female ancestors likely used reciprocal altruism or mutualism to facilitate cooperative relationships with nearby unrelated women. To sustain these mutually beneficial cooperative exchange relationships, women may avoid competitive and status-striving peers, instead preferring kind, humble, and loyal allies. Ancestral women who managed to simultaneously compete for romantic partners while forming cooperative female friendships would have been especially successful. Women may therefore have developed strategies to achieve both competitive and cooperative goals, such as guising their intrasexual competition as prosociality or vulnerability. These historical challenges make sense of the seemingly paradoxical pattern of female aversion to competition, relational aggression, and valuation of loyal friends, offering insight into possible opportunities for intervention.
... Bischoping (1993: 2) suggested that the "most striking developments in this area since 1992 are found in the discourse about gender and conversation, rather than in conversations themselves". A recent research conducted by Eckhaus and Ben-Hador (2017), which focused on gender-based differences in gossiping habits, established that in the quantitative sense, men and women spend approximately the same amount of time gossiping, as well as that women's gossip is more positive than men's. ...
The Sociology of Gossip and Small Talk: A Metatheory. The present paper outlines a metatheory of gossip and small talk. While studies in the domain of the sociology of gossip are relatively sporadic, nonsystematic, and sparse, we find it possible to identify three key perspectives from which social scientists usually consider gossip. These three perspectives closely correspond to George Ritzer’s metatheory, as well as his differentiation between the social facts paradigm, the social definition paradigm, and the social behavior paradigm in sociology. Hence, in this paper, we also offer a brief overview of sociological research on the phenomenon of gossip, as well as studies conducted with the aim of answering the question of what people gossip about. Further, we thoroughly analyze the three abovementioned paradigms, which are here conceptualized as separate theoretical perspectives in the sociology of gossip. Concordantly, we argue the existence of functionalist, dramaturgical, and social exchange perspectives in the context of theoretical and empirical research on gossip in the field of sociology as well as other social sciences. Finally, we claim that gossip is one of the essential characteristics of social life and, as such, plays a crucial role in the most important social processes, such as the maintenance of group and social cohesion, the transfer of cultural values, sociocultural learning, the establishment of social control, the process of gaining social reputation and status, social exchange of information, and others, which is why we believe that gossip merits a more central position in sociological inquiries. © 2020, Sociologicky Ustav SAV / Institute for Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
... We employed automated content analysis techniques using TEXTIMUS software (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019), which supports big data analysis. The first stage was to generate N-gram combinations. ...
The current study is an exploratory study designed to examine the traits that are considered essential or important for research students, from the perspective of student advisors. The study addresses the broad question of whether and how academic faculty members select research students when seeking to maximize their own research outputs and achieving their own research goals. We employ a mixedmethods design, which incorporates content analysis based on Natural Language Processing techniques, and Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to assess our model’s goodness of fit. Prominent traits that faculty members used to assess research candidates are investigated and discussed.
... For text analysis we used TEXTIMUS 1.0, a software designed for text mining and analysis (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019). The software includes features for Natural Language Processing (NLP), sentiment analysis, and latent themes discovery. ...
This pioneering study examines the meaning of academic leadership in terms of the changing of the guard in academia. Research findings on seniority and experience and their association with leadership show that these have a considerable impact on management skills and on the ability of those with experience and seniority to influence the young leadership. This is particularly essential in academia where research is the most meaningful and effective value that serves as a measure of faculty members. Management skills are not perceived as a coherent part of faculty members’ work. Structural Equation Modeling confirmed the developed model. Findings show that indeed, from the perspective of faculty at the academic institution, senior experienced faculty members undoubtedly contribute to the academic institution first of all in research, but also otherwise. Senior and experienced faculty members contribute by encouraging, directing, and guiding young faculty members on how to contribute to the institution, particularly through the activity which is expected of them as academic faculty – i.e., research. This urging and direction is one of the most well-known qualities in the context of academic leadership – the ability to help people develop, advance, and to outline a high-quality academic research tradition. The meaning of the findings is that senior faculty has a contribution beyond their direct output in the form of scientific publications, as a research engine and spotlight for the young faculty. Notably, no difference was found in faculty’s perception of this contribution of senior faculty members by gender or age.
... Table 3 lists the proportion who responded to the third question, illustrated in Figure 1. We employed a mixed methods research design (Imran & Yusoff, 2015;Molina-Azorin, 2016), which offers a compliment of strengths of both the qualitative and empirical methods (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019;Eckhaus & Davidovitch, 2019). We used Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) to test the model's goodness-of-fit (Eckhaus, 2019;Eckhaus & Sheaffer, 2018). ...
... For text analysis we used TEXTIMUS 1.0 (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2019). The software is designed for text mining and included support for Natural Language Processing (NLP), sentiment analysis, and latent themes discovery. ...
This study is a pioneer study examining the significance of retirement in terms of lost investments and outcomes. Research findings on the output of academic faculty and on measures of excellence in higher education indicate that upon retirement the academic institution as an organization loses not only faculty who are still capable of contributing both to research and to teaching, but rather also two other important products: valuable knowledge and experience accumulated by senior faculty in the academic system in light of the institution’s investments in them. 107 questionnaires were collected from senior faculty members in a case study of one academic institution. A combined research method was utilized, consisting of qualitative and statistical analysis, with the aim of exploring the significance of retirement in terms of lost input and output, as perceived by academic faculty members. The research findings indicate that indeed, as perceived by the faculty, academic institutions as an organization lose faculty who are still capable of contributing to both research and teaching, as well as valuable knowledge and experience accumulated by senior faculty members within the academic system, after being nurtured by the academic institution.
... suggesting that perhaps the outcome of gossip, even if the content was positive at first glance, was negative. Considering that five of the six housemates investigated were women, this is also in line with the finding that when women gossip, they employ positive terms, even if the emphasis is on negative traits (Eckhaus and Ben-Hador 2017). Another interesting finding was that hardly any conversations were rated as comprising information about group comparison. ...
Reality television is a social experiment and interactions observed among contestants reflect a microcosm of real-life exchanges. In the present study, we inspected gossip in the eleventh season of Bigg Boss, an Indian reality show fashioned after UK’s Big Brother. Specifically, two independent raters coded the frequency of conversations, how many of them were gossip, who the targets were, and how much each contestant contributed to the exchange. The connotation, content, and purpose of gossip was investigated for the top three contestants and those who were evicted in earlier episodes. We found that the winners engaged in and were targets of more conversations than those evicted. Consistent with theories of group and sexual selection, women spoke more about physical appearance and reputation, and the only male contestant investigated discussed status and prestige more than other topics. Information sharing was primarily motivated by social comparisons and intra-sexual competition, but not so much to compare groups.
... suggesting that perhaps the outcome of gossip, even if the content was positive at first glance, was negative. Considering that five of the six housemates investigated were women, this is also in line with the finding that when women gossip, they employ positive terms, even if the emphasis is on negative traits (Eckhaus and Ben-Hador 2017). Another interesting finding was that hardly any conversations were rated as comprising information about group comparison. ...
... Categories were binary coded: Each statement was marked 0 if the text did not belong to the category, and 1 if it did belong (Eckhaus & Sheaffer, 2018b). We employed a mixed-methods design (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2017), a combination of strength, integrating qualitative and empirical analyses, with the aim of gaining better understanding of the research problem (Tomas, 2017). ...
Many studies have been conducted on teaching evaluations and student surveys. The current study is unique for examining, by means of direct questions, the meaning of teaching surveys as perceived by academic faculty in Israel. Senior faculty members at academic institutions completed questionnaires, with a total of 182 questionnaires collected. We employed mixed research methods, beginning with qualitative analysis followed by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), with the goal of developing a model that reflects faculty members’ beliefs on teaching surveys. The research findings show that the lecturers find that student evaluations are detrimental to their relationship with their students, and adversely affect their teaching practice and interpersonal interactions with their students. In view of the importance attributed to students' voices and their opinions of teaching, the question is how should these evaluations be addressed, Do teaching surveys constitute a reliable managerial tool and a foundation for improving teaching – or should other tools be developed to improve teaching practices, independent of students' opinions?
... We employed TEXTIMUS, a text mining and analysis software [47]. First, n-gram frequencies were generated. ...
Leadership is a concept that is proven very hard to define unambiguously. Despite of this scientific gap, practical questions still are set towards leadership. Concept of leadership is widely used in other research and it is one of the most interesting research issues in organizations. Good leadership is like good quality; we can recognize it when we experience it, but it is quite hard to define where this feeling of good or bad quality came from. Data was gathered in 2015–2017 from students in Turku University of Applied Sciences. Students analyzed their former leaders with open answers. We employed a mix method design with both quantitative and qualitative analysis. For quantitative analysis, we employed automated content analysis based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Results show that autocratic leadership is connected to negative picture of leader with in millennials Future research aspects and recommendations are issued in this paper.
... We employed TEXTIMUS, a software that supports text mining and automated content analysis (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2017. In the first step, we generated n-gram frequencies. ...
Many studies have been conducted on teaching evaluations completed by students and on myths and facts concerning these evaluations performed by students at academic institutions. The current study is unique in examining the meaning of teaching evaluations as perceived by academic faculty members in Israel through direct questions, with an emphasis on faculty's recommendations for improving the evaluations to make students' comments meaningful for enhancing and advancing their teaching. The perception of evaluations is unique too. Evaluations are part of faculty's learning outputs in their courses, with the aim being for graduates of academic systems to have the ability to provide objective and fair assessments.One hundred seventy seven questionnaires were gathered from senior faculty at several academic institutions. Qualitative and statistical research tools were used in order to form a model that expresses the negative implications as seen by faculty members and alternatives for measuring the performance of faculty in academic teaching. The research findings indicate that lecturers note "professional" alternatives and see teaching evaluations as a populist rather than a professional tool. Moreover, although the lecturers gauge the damage caused to them as a result of student evaluations, where the enormous damage caused to them is disproportionate to the number of respondents, and although faculty members believe that student evaluations are untrustworthy, students' opinions on the courses are important. Their recommendation is that the evaluation should be a tool for teaching how to perform evaluations and convey criticism – and in this field not much has been done in academic institutions, if at all. Academia sees evaluations as a technical matter, a means of satisfying students by letting them express their opinions and of giving students a feeling that the system is attentive to their voice, to their views.Indeed, students' voice is important to the lecturers – their opinions of teaching are important – and that is precisely why action should be taken to render these evaluations fair. Students should understand the power of the words that express their evaluation of the lecturers. This point of view is a first of its kind, where academic faculty members support students' opinions and provide recommendations aimed at their improvement.
... We used TEXTIMUS, a software designed for text mining and analysis (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2017;. First, we generated n-gram frequencies . ...
This study focuses on the evaluation of academic conferences and ways of improving them. The study includes a case study of one university in Israel. Sixty two academic faculty members from varied departments completed a questionnaire, incl uding 61.7% women and 38.3% men. The research participants were asked a single open question: "What do you think co uld be improved at conferences?" In addition, age, seniority, and the number of times the respondents had initiated or served as a partner in initiating a conference were also examined. The main findings are as follows: Age predicts seniority. Seniority ha s a positive effect on the number of times the respondent organized or was a partner in organizing a conference. Seniority has a negative effect on time, i.e., the more senior the faculty member the more he or she would like conferences to be short and to the point. Moreover, the amount of initiatives to organize a conference or to be a partner in establishing a conference has a negative effect on interaction, i. e., the more initiating the faculty member the less he or she is interested in interpersonal int eractions at conferences. The wish to space out sessions and lectures has a positive effect on the need to improve the quality of the lectures.
... We employed TEXTIMUS, a software supporting text mining and analysis (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2017). First, we generated n-gram sets of frequencies. ...
This study continues a series of studies on the effectiveness of scientific conferences. This topic has not been sufficiently investigated although it receives large funds, assuming that these conferences have added value for staff members' academic-professional development. Predicated on questionnaires filled by 96 academic staff members from 17 different departments, we found that when choosing conferences to attend, the type of faculty affect the search for cooperation. Moreover, staff members from the Faculty of Natural Sciences attribute more significance to conferences that result in publications than staff members from the Faculty of Health. The Faculty of Engineering creates negative mediation in the correlation between gender and cooperation. Namely, the Faculty of Engineering does not urge cooperation and even has a negative effect, but its effect is evident mainly among men. This finding complements prior research findings showing that women are more inclined to cooperation (Eckhaus & Davidovitch, 2018a). The current findings show that the inclination to cooperation is not related only to gender issues rather the faculty has an effect as well. The current findings might have a contribution to the significance of the faculty as an influential factor of conferences on cooperation – and in fact on the professional development of staff members.
... Or alternatively, this respondent used this approach as he was unable to think of a specific individual. It is important to note that studies show that women and men engage in the same amount of gossiping activity (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador 2017). 3. Self-describing (or someone very similar): A few respondents declared either option openly, while others seemed to imply it with different levels of indirectness. ...
This research primarily aims to evaluate traits exhibited by people when asked to describe in writing a third person to a friend. These traits were classified as positive or negative based on a qualitative analysis conducted on 2230 respondent texts. The request was, in fact, perceived by many participants as a request to gossip, and was opposed with various tacit and explicit rejections. Traits were analyzed and rated by software that was developed specifically for this research. The majority of traits were found to be positive, with ‘good’ the most prominent. This analysis also confirmed that people do not want to be perceived as gossips. They tend to oppose the request to gossip and prefer to use positive trait descriptors.
... Consequently, an investigation in qualitative tools such as observations in organizations and employees' interviews is required in addition to a quantitative study about the connections of the variables to the performance. Therefore, a dual methodology of using qualitative and quantitative research tools [67] is needed. Another implication that should be sharpened is the organizational need for matching the SC levels to avoid "A-type" conlicts. ...
... The researchers employed TEXTIMUS, a text mining and analysis software (Eckhaus & Ben-Hador, 2017). First, n-gram frequencies were generated. ...
This study deals with immigrant scientists integrated in academia in Israel. Studies on the subject indicate the contribution of immigrant scientists to research. The current study focuses on the influence of scientists' birth country on selecting destinations for academic conferences, as well as on the influence of one's native language on the academic output resulting from research conferences. This is a pilot study exploring the effect of academic conferences from the perspective of birth country - comparing Israeli born and USSR born academics - on the motivation of faculty members to attend conferences, the nature of the conferences they select, the differences between Israeli natives and non-natives with regard to how their perceive the influence of conferences and their contribution to their academic work. This research offers a case study, investigating the effect of scholars from two different countries and cultural background, Israel and USSR. This pioneering research provides the grounds for many extensions, studies that will investigate the impact of other countries and their effect on conference selection. The study addresses a case study of a single university in Israel that absorbed many immigrant scientists from the former USSR in the 1990s. Ninety-four academic faculty members from various departments answered the questionnaire, of them 60.9% women and 39.1% men. Faculty members referred to the conference's contribution with regard to their professional development. In addition, the greater inclination of Israeli researchers than researchers born in the USSR to take their family members with them when travelling for conferences was noted. Since the contribution of immigrant scientists was found to be significant and since academic conferences are a significant part of the work of faculty members and receive considerable funds from academic institutions, the research findings might illuminate the choice of conferences by immigrant scientists and their preferences - compared to native born scientists - with the purpose of examining whether conferences are perceived by Israeli born faculty members as productive.
This article discusses the gossip practices of Muslim women in the film Tilik the Series. This study focuses on Muslim women to explore how they are represented in the media, especially in Indonesia, a country with a Muslim majority. In a culture influenced by Islam, religion shapes social norms and behaviors, including gossip. The film Tilik the Series depicts Javanese women, who are predominantly Muslim, although non-Muslim characters may not be prominently featured. This article aims to reveal how the process of gossip by women wearing the hijab is carried out as a storytelling tool and also plays a role in forming and maintaining social norms as well as revealing the types and functions of gossip among them. Apart from that, gossip in Tilik the Series is not just empty talk, every gossip practice has a different type and function, and each type and function can narrate the ins and outs of social life, which can be destructive and transformative. The method used is qualitative by identifying the relationship between types of gossip and function of gossip with the character of Muslim women. The conclusion is that the Muslim women in the film when gossiping tend to talk about the situation in their family environment or what we call the house-talk type. The gossip they do contains incitement so it can influence the opinion of the person they are talking to.
Existing research and popular culture suggest that women are more approving of gossip. But are they? This research note uses two studies to ask whether gender stereotypes about gossip and other key responses to norm violations are wrong. The first study (N = 133) confirms that people stereotype women as more approving of gossip and that they hold gender stereotypes about other key responses to those who violate social norms, namely, ostracism and direct confrontation of norm violators. We then assess the accuracy of these stereotypes using a unique data set of 17,268 participants from 57 societies. In contrast to the stereotypes, these cross-cultural data show that men are more approving of gossip and ostracism in response to norm violations, and this holds across most societies. We also do not find any evidence for the stereotype that men are more approving of direct confrontation of norm violators.
This review article aimed at explaining gender differences in expressive language that emerge beginning from the childhood from the biopsychosocial model of perspective. Afterwards, especially parental role on emotional component of expressive language was specified by giving example research studies. The most important finding was that parent and child gender may interact on child’s emotional expressiveness; while mothers tend to encourage their children to emotionally express themselves more than fathers, both mothers and fathers of girls motivate their children more to be emotionally assertive as compared to parents of boys. Parental socialization of expressive language and more specifically of emotional expressiveness results in some gender differences in both oral communication and written language among both adults and adolescents. Similar gender differences can also be observed in online communication. It seems that these differences relate both the level of linguistic effectiveness in general and mostly emotional component of the language, which is emotional expressiveness. Literature indicates that a substantial level of gender differences in language is related to socialization processes that children go through and such gender differences may put especially boys at a disadvantaged position in terms of social and emotional development. Future studies may further investigate gender differences in language and reasons behind such differences from both biological and social perspectives. Since Besides, some intervention programs for gender equality can be developed and applied in related contexts such as families and school environment.
Talking about someone else’s life is an interesting topic for a group conversation. Sometimes it can turn into gossip! We often think of gossip as something negative, and it certainly can be! Gossip can even be a part of bullying. But have you ever thought about whether gossip might also play a positive role in our lives? In this article, we will tell you about some research on why people gossip, and how it might help to build social bonds. We will also explain the complex network of actions that happen in the brain every time we participate in gossip. Hopefully you will learn that, while gossip can sometimes be negative, it is also a normal part of our social lives.
Gossip promotes prosocial behavior via reputational concern. However, the relative effectiveness of positive and negative gossip has been understudied. I examined to what extent positive and negative gossip promoted prosocial behavior when a potential consequence of gossip was positively framed (a third party offering a financial bonus) and negatively framed (a third party deducting a bonus). I found that gossip, irrespective of its valence, promoted generosity via reputational concern in both contexts. Yet, analyses suggested that positive gossip may have a stronger effect in promoting prosociality. The findings, together with previous findings, call for further investigation of the relationship between the effectiveness of positive and negative gossip in promoting prosociality and types of reputational consequences.
While some scholars regard workplace gossip as norm-violating behavior that costs gossipers status, others suggest that gossip clarifies organizational norms and thereby increases gossiper status. Integrating gossip literature with norm research, we develop a model to distinguish positive gossip from negative gossip and theorize their independent and joint effects on gossiper workplace status via peers' perceptions of norm violation and norm clarification-two concurrent but countervailing mechanisms. We hypothesize that positive gossip relates positively to norm clarification perceptions but negatively to norm-violation perceptions, whereas negative gossip relates positively to both norm clarification and norm-violation perceptions. Interactively, positive gossip weakens the norm-violation effects of negative gossip on gossiper status, and each type of gossip replaces the norm clarification effects of the other type of gossip on gossiper status. These hypotheses were largely supported in a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment with 345 full-time employees (Study 1), a three-wave field survey with data from 192 full-time employees (Study 2), and a round-robin field survey with data from 287 focal employees and 1,075 of their team members embedded in 87 teams (Study 3). Three additional studies reported in the supplementary materials revealed contingencies of the hypotheses: The hypotheses received support with a different experimental manipulation (Study 4), and the hypothesized norm-violation effect of negative gossip was not contingent on gossip content (target's self-serving vs. nonself-serving behavior, Study 5) but gossip intention such that the effect became nonsignificant when gossip intention was group-serving (cf. self-serving, Study 6). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
p style="text-align:justify">In the current study we examined the relationships between student evaluations of lecturers (teaching surveys) and faculty members' perceptions of these surveys as capable of blocking and limiting their professional advancement. Faculty members are judged and evaluated by academic authorities for their academic performance in research and teaching. 178 questionnaires were collected from the faculty of several academic institutions. We employ a mix method analysis, and form a model that reflects the factors perceived by faculty members as having the potential to block their professional advancement in academia. The research findings show that lecturers are of the opinion that teaching load has a detrimental effect on students' evaluations in the surveys. Lecturers at the beginning of their academic life, those in lower ranks: senior teacher and senior lecturer, address the negative aspects of the surveys more than others. The research findings indicate that although more hours are taught in colleges than at universities, it is harder to receive positive survey ratings at colleges. Moreover, since in Israeli academia research is still the main criterion for promotion – faculty members born in Israel were found to teaching less than those born elsewhere. Hence, faculty members think that student surveys are destructive and entail risks for their professional advancement. Assuming that students' voice and opinions on teaching are important – how can a balance be achieved between the research achievements of faculty members and student satisfaction?</p
BACKGROUND
In recent years, the need to develop performance-based measurement systems to improve project management outcomes has dramatically increased. Managers still take various risks during the course of managing projects which lead to ineffective decision making. A range of theories discuss such behaviors. These theories demonstrate that the discussion of risk embedded in non-optimal decision-making processes is based on theory rather than practical knowledge. However, various components of project management can be derived from academic best practices for decision making.
OBJECTIVE
The study aims to explore whether articles in high impact journals tend to embody practical, rather than theoretical, knowledge thus closing the gap between academia and industry. The study is based on SEM and various machine learning classification methods.
METHOD
The study was conducted using an NLP analysis of 1461 academic journals in the field of project management.
RESULTS
Results show a significant positive relationship between the success of projects and the impact of new practical procedures. In contrast, a negative correlation was found between theories that use non-practical processes of effective project management.
CONCLUSION
Managers can learn about new methods for project management from articles in high impact factor journals.
Marjorie Maido is a 4 th year PhD Sociology student of Eˆtvˆs Loraˇnd University (ELTE). She works as a faculty member of Social Science Department of Iloilo Science and Technology University in Iloilo City, Philippines but is currently on study-leave. Her interests include maritime sociology, culture, migration studies, deviance, economics, and linguistics. She is working on her dissertation on maritime sociology, particularly exploring the identity of global Filipino seafarers. 29 MARJORIE ABLANIDO MAIDO ABSTRACT Drawing from Filipino seafarersí narratives regarding their firsthand experiences of gossip or gossiping onboard international ocean-going vessels, this paper analyzes the masculinities expressed by Filipino seafarers while they are on board and at home through linguistic discourses of gossip and spousal arguments or compromise. The data is supplemented by the interviews of seafarersí wives regarding masculinities while the seafarers are at home. The ship as a workplace dominated by men reinforces masculine traits and behavior where different masculinities are displayed and expressed. Gossip is prevalent among Filipino seafarers as part of their cultural make-up and is used both as a socialization tool and a strategy to accumulate onboard social capital. Onboard gossip exposes the seafarerís agentic flaws ñ his incompetence, unacceptable work attitudes, and work ethics. For Filipino seafarers, this topic stresses how they capitalize on their workplace reputation, which is crucial in the continuance of their careers. Also, onboard gossip exposes biases against management styles and targets queer seafarers. Masculinities at home are expressed through compromises and arguments on sustaining the ìgood provider/good father/good sonî roles of the seafarer despite the temporary loss of income to reinstate the seafarerís relevance in the family.
This article explores how gay men in the UK reflect upon the speech practices of those who refer to themselves as ‘straight-acting’ on hook-up apps. Using interview data from eight informants, this article identifies cultural and social models of hegemonic masculinity that gay men are perceived to take inspiration from to masculinize their speech and outlines the linguistic conventions and patterns that straight-acting gay men are said to enact. It is suggested that straight-acting gay men draw on the figure of the ‘lad’ in British culture and emulate some of their speech practices to increase their proximity to a hegemonic masculinity, but that they also speak in short, blunt, and non-conversational manners to other app users to remain socially indirect and inexpressive. Using sexual scripting theory and style-shifting as theoretical frameworks, this article also suggests that gay men emulate a ‘straight-acting’ style if a sexual hook-up is sought as opposed to dates or friends. This has potential implications for the self-worth of marginalized, effeminate gay men using hook-up apps, and also contributes to previous literature on gay masculinities, hook-up app usage and interactive practices, highlighting the intersections between hegemonic and subordinated masculinities.
Objective: Rape-survivor identity is a sign of recovery and positive therapeutic progress among rape victims. This study is one of the few to focus on factors predicting self-labeling as a survivor among self-acknowledged rape victims by evaluating the contribution of time span of the rape narrative, rape terminology, and expression of faith.
Method: The data was elicited from 3794 rape narratives published on Brave Miss World, a website established, inter alia, to allow rape victims to share their stories. To identify the key concepts within rape narratives, we performed text mining based on Natural Language Processing (NLP), and developed a model. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was used to test the model’s goodness-of-fit analysis.
Results: The results indicate that there is a good fit between the theoretical model and the data. Time predicts expressions of faith and use of rape terminology, while there is a positive correlation between faith and use of rape terminology. Both expressions of faith and use of rape terminology mediate between time span and self-labeling as a survivor, with a significant positive effect on self-labeling as a survivor.
Conclusions: The results suggest that addressing rape victim faith and use of rape terminology in depiction of their sexual trauma may be beneficial for the therapeutic process and post-rape recovery.
Keywords: Natural Language Processing, Rape, Narrative, Survivor Self-Label, Survivor Identity, Faith, Time Span.
Three studies were conducted to explore Christians’ beliefs and responses to listening to gossip. This research framed gossip as a co-constructed conversation between speaker and listener. Listening to gossip was examined through the dual lenses of personal goals and societal listening norms. Results revealed that Christians believe listening to gossip is harmful to themselves, the gossip target, and the gossip speaker. And yet, many listen and contribute to gossip. Personal goals for approval and inclusion as well as societal supportive listening norms exert pressure to listen to gossip. When respondents addressed gossip, they tended to do so indirectly.
Qualitative researchers commonly perceive that positivist hard-science researchers and policies of
governments deprecate qualitative methods and approaches. Curiously though, we could not see anyone
asking quantitative researchers ‘What do you think about qualitative approaches and methods?’ We did this in
interviews with 17 assumed quantitative researchers in the fields of advanced materials construction, civil
engineering, transport modelling, computer science, and geotechnics. Surprisingly, these researchers rarely
described themselves as purely quantitative, and were rarely against the five qualitative methods discussed.
Moreover, many actually used qualitative methods, often in ways we had not anticipated. Drawing on a
Bakhtinian grounded framework, we present our analysis as a performed ethnographic dialogue between data
extracts and research literature. We present evidence that the alleged qualitative-quantitative divide does not
apply here, and suggest dialogic ways to see teach "qualitative" and "quantitative" and some associated terms.
We conducted two studies whose primary goal was to assess the similarity between stereotypes about women and men and stereotypes about successful scientists. In addition, we examined the degree to which scientists, men, and women are seen as agentic or communal. Results revealed greater similarity between stereotypes about men and stereotypes about scientists than between stereotypes about women and scientists. Men and scientists were seen as highly agentic, women as highly communal, and scientists as less communal than either men or women. The higher the proportion of women in a scientific field, the more similar the stereotypes of scientists in that field were to stereotypes about women. Female participants perceived more similarity between women and scientists and judged women to be more agentic than male participants did. The results are consistent with role-congruity and lack-of-fit theories that report incompatibility of female gender stereotypes with stereotypes about high-status occupational roles. The results demonstrate that women are perceived to lack the qualities needed to be successful scientists, which may contribute to discrimination and prejudice against female scientists.
We investigate the self-evaluative function of competence-related gossip for individuals who receive it. Using the Self-Concept Enhancing Tactician (SCENT) model, we propose that individuals use evaluative information about others (i.e., gossip) to improve, promote, and protect themselves. Results of a critical incident study and an experimental study showed that positive gossip had higher self-improvement value than negative gossip, whereas negative gossip had higher self-promotion value and raised higher self-protection concerns than positive gossip. Self-promotion mediated the relationship between gossip valence and pride, while self-protection mediated the relationship between gossip valence and fear, although the latter mediated relationship emerged for receivers with mastery goals rather than performance goals. These results suggest that gossip serves self-evaluative functions for gossip receivers and triggers self-conscious emotions.
Although measures of cultural identity, values, and behavior exist in the multicultural psychological literature, there is currently no measure that explicitly assesses ethnic minority individuals’ positive and negative affect toward culture. Therefore, we developed 2 new measures called the Feelings About Culture Scale—Ethnic Culture and Feelings About Culture Scale—Mainstream American Culture and tested their psychometric properties. In 6 studies, we piloted the measures, conducted factor analyses to clarify their factor structure, and examined reliability and validity. The factor structure revealed 2 dimensions reflecting positive and negative affect for each measure. Results provided evidence for convergent, discriminant, criterion-related, and incremental validity as well as the reliability of the scales. The Feelings About Culture Scales are the first known measures to examine both positive and negative affect toward an individual’s ethnic culture and mainstream American culture. The focus on affect captures dimensions of psychological experiences that differ from cognitive and behavioral constructs often used to measure cultural orientation. These measures can serve as a valuable contribution to both research and counseling by providing insight into the nuanced affective experiences ethnic minority individuals have toward culture.
Quantitative and qualitative researchers use different methods and have different goals. At the level of methods, quantitative researchers criticize qualitative researchers for not performing null hypothesis significance tests. However, I review literature showing that these are invalid, and so it is not particularly meaningful to criticize a lack of performance of something that should not be performed anyhow. More generally, I suggest that there are strengths and limitations to quantitative and qualitative methods. The more interesting question pertains to goals, and quantitative and qualitative researchers differ there, too. I briefly mention some limitations of the usual quantitative goal, which is to find causal mechanisms. But a typical qualitative goal of describing personal or subjective experience also has limitations. Finally, I compare both quantitative and qualitative social science research to physics and show that each has similarities and differences. There is much for quantitative and qualitative social science researchers to gain, not only by considering each other's methods and goals carefully but also by going outside social science and considering the accomplishments in nonsocial sciences.
The authors highlight important contributions of qualitative research for the study of close relationships, arguing for greater representation of this scholarship in the journals. Four challenges experienced by interpretive researchers trying to publish in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and close relationship journals are discussed.
An interest in the affairs of same-sex others is especially strong among females, and women are more likely than men to use gossip in an aggressive, competitive manner. The goal of such gossip is to exclude competitors from a social group and damage the competitor’s ability to maintain a reliable social network of her own. Timeworn assumptions about an affinity between females and negative gossip appear to be more than just a stereotype. Understanding the dynamics of competitive gossip may also give us insight into related social phenomena such as how people use social media such as Facebook.
Indirect aggression includes behaviours such as criticizing a competitor's appearance, spreading rumours about a person's sexual behaviour and social exclusion. Human females have a particular proclivity for using indirect aggression, which is typically directed at other females, especially attractive and sexually available females, in the context of intrasexual competition for mates. Indirect aggression is an effective intrasexual competition strategy. It is associated with a diminished willingness to compete on the part of victims and with greater dating and sexual behaviour among those who perpetrate the aggression.
Gossip has been related to friendship as it can increase the bond between people and sense of belonging to a group. However, the role of gender in the relationship between gossip and friendship has not been examined in the literature. So, the present study examined gender differences in the relationship between friendship quality and gossip tendency with a sample of 167 female and 69 male Western Canadian undergraduate University students using the Friendship questionnaire and the Tendency to Gossip questionnaire. Given gender differences in friendship, with males being more agentic and females more communal, the relationship between gossip and friendship was predicted to be stronger in the males compared to the females. Friendship quality was positively correlated with gossip tendency in the males, but this effect was not present with the females. The information gossip scale was strongly associated with male friendship quality. This finding may be related to the greater emphasis on status with males, and that possession of knowledge and control of information is a method of attaining status. Physical appearance gossip was found to be more prevalent in females, but not related to friendship quality. This type of gossip may be a more of a competitive threat to the relationship in females. Achievement related gossip was also related to male friendship quality, which reflects the greater emphasis on individuation in male friendships.
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.
This research examines 2 issues that have been overlooked by previous research on the subculture of female inmates: the social functions of gossip in a maximum security female prison and the inmates’ motivations and attitudes toward gossip and gossipers. The inmates of Israel's female prison perceive gossip as a negative phenomenon. Although they claim that gossip is frequent and central in their prison lives, most deny gossiping themselves. The inmates give several explanations for gossip. They see gossip as an inherent part of “female nature” and claim that gossip is used to increase one's social or material status. They also argue that gossip is an act of envy or an expression of useless evilness. Nonetheless, this study proposes that the inmates use gossip to relieve various pains of imprisonments and that despite the inmates’ negative attitudes, gossip may serve other beneficial social purposes of which the inmates are unaware. Although complex and occasionally contradictory, the findings of this study emphasize the multiple positive and negative functions that gossip has in the prison lives of female inmates.
Although scholars have discussed the occurrence of gossip in social situations, gossip's function as a social influence tool has received little theoretical attention. Of particular interest is the issue of whether gossip is untrustworthy, leading to relational demise, or whether gossip can lead to perceived liking, trust, and expertise. The prediction was made that whether gossip acts as relational ruin or social glue depends on the valence of the gossip and the type of relationship among the communicators. It was proposed that source cue perceptions will be the function of an interaction between relationship type and gossip valence. Specifically, friends' judgments will not be affected by gossip valence, but strangers' assessments of liking, trust, and expertise will increase when gossip is positive and will decrease when gossip is negative (when controlling for propensity to gossip). An experiment was designed to test these predictions. The data indicated that both positive and negative gossip are perceived negatively for both friends and strangers.
This article examines the key themes surrounding gossip including its contexts, the various outcomes (positive and negative) of gossip, as well as a selection of challenges and controversies. The challenges that are highlighted revolve around definitional issues, methodological approaches, and ethical considerations. The authors’ analysis suggests that the characteristics and features of gossip lend itself to a process-oriented approach whereby the beginning and, particularly, end points of gossip are not always easily identified. Gossip about a subject or person can temporarily disappear only for it to resurface at some later stage. In addition, questions pertaining to the effects of gossip and ethical-based arguments depend on the nature of the relationships within the gossip triad (gossiper, listener/respondent, and target).
A newly-developed 20-item Tendency to Gossip Questionnaire (TGQ) is described. TGQ scores were normally distributed and showed high internal consistency (.87) for a sample of 120 students (58 female, 62 male). TGQ scores for females were significantly higher than those for males. The TGQ was validated against peer ratings using 30 kibbutz members. The TGQ's relationship to social desirability and vocational interest in people-oriented professions were studied. Four possible subscales of gossip content emerged through factor analysis: (1) physical appearance, (2) achievement, (3) social information, and (4) sublimated gossip.
Explores the issue of rumour and gossip in organisations. Given that rumour and gossip can break the harmony of the workplace unless well managed, it is rather surprising that they have not been sufficiently examined in management and organisational studies. In addition to providing an analysis of the role played by rumour and gossip within organisations, including, but not limited to, its origin, hidden reasons and its management, the role of gender is examined. Our research reveals that despite the commonly-held and entrenched view that women are largely responsible for instigating and perpetuating organisational rumour and gossip, a review of the evidence fails to support this claim.
This study examined the characteristics of gossip among fourth-grade girls and their close friends. Sixty friendship dyads were videotaped as they engaged in conversation, and their gossip was coded. Analyses revealed gossip to be a dominant feature of their interaction and that it was primarily neutral in valence. Sociometrically popular girls and their friends were observed to gossip more about peers, and their gossip was more evaluative than that between rejected girls and their friends. Gossip frequency and valence related to observed friendship closeness and friendship quality. Race differences in the characteristics of gossip were also explored. The study results are important in our efforts to develop a fuller understanding of the important interpersonal process of gossip and the functions that it serves in the context of close friendships.
Each day, we struggle to distinguish rumor from fact. Did the U.S. government blow up levees in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina? Did American soldiers use night-vision goggles to spy on Iraqi women in Fallujah during the Iraqi War? These reports, taken from national and international media accounts, turned out to be false. In
Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches, expert rumor researchers Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia investigate how rumors start and spread, how their accuracy can be determined, and how rumors can be controlled, particularly given their propagation across media outlets and within organizations. Exactly what is rumor, and how does it differ from gossip? Even though these terms are commonly used interchangeably, they differ greatly in function and content. Whereas gossip serves to evaluate and shape the social network, rumor functions to make sense of an ambiguous situation or to help people adapt to perceived or actual threats. Why do people spread and believe rumors? Rumors attract attention, evoke emotion, incite involvement, and affect attitudes and actions. Rumor transmission is motivated by three broad psychological motivations--fact-finding, relationship enhancement, and self-enhancement--all of which help individuals and groups make sense in the face of uncertainty. Rumor is also closely entwined with a host of social and organizational phenomena, including social cognition, prejudice and stereotyping, interpersonal and intergroup relations, social influence, and organizational trust and communication. This book comes at an interesting time given the sociopolitical Zeitgeist, making the study of rumor accuracy, transmission, and propagation a high priority for the international intelligence community. It will also be of interest to social psychologists, organizational psychologists, and researchers in organizational communication, organizational behavior, human resource administration, and public relations personnel who regularly encounter rumors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
[the author's] thesis is that the activity we sometimes describe as gossip . . . is fundamental to the functioning of all human collectives / the functions . . . concern the successful adaptation of humans to the requirements of group living and the control mechanisms that operate to conserve effectively functioning human groups / central to these functions are what may be called reputational processes
far from being a trivial and superficial activity that appeals only to shallow and idle minds, gossip is intelligent action / it is a complex and sophisticated instrument of adaptation / gossip is a powerful process in the politics of everyday life (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
[examines] the reliability and validity of [the] Gossip Tendency Questionnaire (GTQ) / [also] addressed 4 specific hypotheses: there are individual differences in the tendency to gossip; . . . there is a negative relationship between social desirability and the tendency to report gossip; there are gender differences in tendency to gossip, with women tending to gossip more than men [and] those with vocational interests in people-oriented professions tend to gossip more than those with vocational interest in other fields / two samples were used / sample A was made up of 30 members of a kibbutz in northern Israel [male and female 20–30 yr olds] / sample B consisted of 120 students [aged 19–30 yrs] at the Technion and the University of Haifa
our preliminary results suggest that the tendency to gossip is a personal trait distributed normally among the population tested / the GTQ was validated . . . and we can conclude that we succeeded in operationalizing the personal tendency to gossip (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
We propose that sharing a negative—as compared to a positive—attitude about a third party is particularly effective in promoting closeness between people. Findings from two survey studies and an experiment support this idea. In Studies 1 and 2, participants’ open-ended responses revealed a tendency to recall sharing with their closest friends more negative than positive attitudes about other people. Study 3 established that discovering a shared negative attitude about a target person predicted liking for a stranger more strongly than discovering a shared positive attitude (but only when attitudes were weak). Presumably, sharing negative attitudes is alluring because it establishes in-group/out-group boundaries, boosts self-esteem, and conveys highly diagnostic information about attitude holders. Despite the apparent ubiquity of this effect, participants seemed unaware of it. Instead, they asserted that sharing positive attitudes about others would be particularly effective in promoting closeness.
Gossip’s unrelenting presence throughout time, age, gender, and social structure has sparked a lot of questions regarding its occurrence. Although studies have already been made regarding gossip, it has remained to be an understudied happening in the area of psychological research. This paper examines gossip from a psychological standpoint, looking into the relationship between a person’s self concept and their propensity to gossip. The theory formulated in this study will explain, describe, and predict the nature of gossip as a projection of basic life issues. As such, this paper gives another perspective into how gossip can be viewed, examined, and understood.
Epistemic curiosity, tendency to gossip, and social desirability are social constructs relevant to interpersonal relationships and acquisition of information. Gender and cultural factors may moderate these variables in an important manner. 100 Indian college students (Mage = 21.05, SDage = 4.41, range: 16 - 45) participated in this study, which was an exploratory research to understand the relationship between curiosity, gossip, and social desirability constructs moderated by gender in an Indian sample. It was hypothesized that the reporting of epistemic curiosity and tendencies to gossip were mediated by social desirability. MANOVAs and correlational analyses revealed that epistemic curiosity and social desirability were negatively correlated for male participants, suggesting existence of high curiosity with a low need to portray a favourable self-image. Male participants scored higher on the three constructs, implying gender differences in the Indian sample. Considerations for future research are discussed.
This research uses Christian Hardcore punk to show how evangelical Christian men respond to changes in gender relations that threaten hegemonic masculinity through a music subculture. Drawing on interviews and participant observations of live music shows, I find that Christian Hardcore ministry involves a hybrid mix of aggressive and loving performances of manhood. Christian Hardcore punk men fortify the idea that men and women are essentially opposites through discourse and the segregation of music spaces, even as they deviate from dominant ideas of what makes a man in their strategy of openly expressing the “loving” of secular men. The mechanism for this is the interactions in concert spaces. These findings offer a conceptual move away from studying “godly” masculinity as intrinsically distinct from secular masculinity and illustrate how religious masculinities can be both hegemonic and “soft.”
This study is an examination of homonegativism in sport as described by lesbian collegiate athletes. These athletes (N = 12) participated in semi-structured interviews about their athletic experiences. Analysis of the homonegtive experiences of these athletes revealed three mechanisms inherent in homonegativism in sport. These were (a) discomfort with females who do not conform with the traditional feminine gender-role, (b) application of the lesbian label, and (c) distancing from the lesbian label. Female athletes perceived to act in a manner contrary to traditional gender-roles are labeled as lesbians. Through this labeling society reinforces traditional gender-roles and, ultimately, protects male dominance in sport. Many of the labels heard by the athletes reflected stereotypical beliefs about lesbians. The athletes described many situations where coaches and administrators attempted to promote or preserve a feminine image within their athletic teams and programs. The disempowering aspects of homonegat...
In this paper, I examine the consequences, both positive and negative, of initiating and participating in gossip in work-related contexts. While a commonly held perspective is that gossip is harmful in that it hurts relational interactions by encouraging coalition-building and engendering divisiveness, an alternative hypothesis is that gossip's emotional attributes, can also help to foster stronger relationships and help individuals navigate complex environments. Specifically, I explore the influence of gossip at multiple levels of analysis: individual, dyadic and group. In Study 1, a laboratory experiment that looks at the short-term benefits of engaging in gossip (versus two control conditions, self-disclosure and task discussion), I find that individuals who engage in gossip experience higher positive emotions, energy and motivation but lower levels of state self-esteem. These gossiping dyads also experience dyadic benefits of relationship closeness and cooperation. Study 2 explored both the reputational and team-level outcomes of gossip. This study showed that team members who engaged in gossip were seen as being less trustworthy. Furthermore, gossip centrality had an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship with perceptions of competence. Study 2 showed that gossip about team members negatively influenced team outcomes such as psychological safety, cooperation and viability and increased team-level perceptions of politics while gossip about individuals outside the team has a positive effect on these outcomes, enhancing levels of team cooperation and decreasing perceptions of politics at the team-level. More detailed mediation analyses showed that team process variables, psychological safety and perceptions of politics measured halfway through the course of the team, mediated the negative relationship between intra-team gossip density and team cooperation and team viability measured at the end of the team's lifecycle. In terms of the relationship between extra-team gossip density and team cooperation, it was mediated by decreased team perceptions of politics. This research contributes to the emerging field of inquiry on gossip by providing a comprehensive model of the consequences of gossip at three different levels of analysis as well as a strong empirical test of the effect of gossip on organizationally-relevant outcomes.
Gossip is rarely praised. There seems little virtuous that is about talking behind someone’s back. Whether there is anything virtuous about gossip, however, depends on the kind of gossip. Some gossip is idle, but some evaluative gossip promulgates and enforces norms. When properly motivated, such gossip effects positive change in society and counts as gossiping well. The virtue of gossiping well even includes some kinds of false gossip, namely the sort that exaggerates a pre-existing trait, thereby creating a caricature of a person’s character in order to establish a moral exemplar (or anti-exemplar).
This paper attempts to present a feminist critique of the social and political promotion in Western culture of a univocal model of female corporeity imposed on women, and consequently detrimental to female subjectivity and agency. Starting from the Foucauldian position concerning social oppression determined by the disciplinary gaze of power structures, the paper discusses perspectives of resistance to the patriarchally-motivated scrutiny of the female body, and to the mass-media induced coercion of conformity to the normatized model for the female body in contemporary society.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine organizational perceptions regarding the coaching process as an evaluation tool.
Methodology
– The research method used is a multiple case study based on the author’s work with coached executives in eight organizations in Israel. Texts of 79 coaching encounters with executives, their directors and human resource personnel, were analyzed. Text analysis was performed through a qualitative method.
Findings
– The research findings provide evidence of the intensity of the coaching practice as a tacit evaluating tool for organizational functioning, in relation to five focusses: the selection of executives for the coaching meetings, the participants’ perception of their participation in the coaching process, the organizational control wishes, how participants deal with organizational supervision and confidentiality.
Research limitation
– Research findings are discussed from a perspective of power relations in the organization, and their significance is presented.
Practical implication
– The usage of the coaching tool, not only for its original purpose, but also for evaluating and controlling executives tacitly, can hurt the coaching process, and its authenticity.
Originality value
– The concept of “tacit evaluation” was developed for this research, and the concept of the coaching process as a tacit tool of control and supervision can help us to better understand the coaching process, and its covert and overt components.
Mixed methods research is the use of qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study to gain a more rounded and holistic understanding of the phenomena under investigation. This type of research approach is gaining popularity in the nursing literature as a way to understand the complexity of nursing care and as a means to enhance evidence-based practice. This paper introduces nephrology nurses to mixed methods research, its terminology and application to nephrology nursing. Five common mixed methods designs will be described highlighting the purposes, strengths and weaknesses of each design. Examples of mixed methods research will be given to illustrate the wide application of mixed methods research to nursing and its usefulness in nephrology nursing research.
Recent research suggests that heterosexual and sexual minority women are more similar to each other in relationship development than they are to men who identify a similar sexual orientation (Diamond, L.M., 2008. Sexual fluidity: understanding women's love and desire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Glover, J.A., Galliher, R.V., and Lamere, T.G., 2009. Identity development and exploration among sexual minority adolescents: examination of a multidimensional model. Journal of homosexuality, 56, 77–101). The current study adds to this literature by examining past and current passionate friendship experiences of a small sample of heterosexual and sexual minority young adult women through qualitative interviews. Passionate friendships represent a unique relationship category that blurs the lines between friendship and romantic relationship. Five content themes emerged regarding the formation, features, and function of passionate friendships. Implications for future research based on preliminary findings of similarities and differences within this small sample of heterosexual and sexual minority women's passionate friendships are discussed.
Production deviance is 1 of 5 dimensions of counterproductive work behaviors (CWB). Based on data collected from 362 employees of Chinese enterprises, I examined the predictive effect of Confucian values on production deviance and the mediating effect of job satisfaction on the relationship between Confucian values and production deviance using structural equation modeling. I analyzed 3 factors of production deviance: work sabotage, slackness, and withdrawal. Confucian values were found to have a significant negative impact on these factors. Furthermore, job satisfaction was found to partially mediate the relationship between Confucian values slackness and withdrawal, but not work sabotage.
Although ‘girl power’ has become a mainstream concept, some scholars have argued that we are in the midst of a media-generated backlash designed to undo the empowerment of girls and women. US popular culture targets young girls with anti-feminist messages, which undermine feminist inroads. To explore this issue, I conduct qualitative textual analysis of four television programs aimed at young girls. I find that much of this programming is anti-feminist.
Existing risk adjustment models for intensive care unit (ICU) outcomes rely on manual abstraction of patient-level predictors from medical charts. Developing an automated method for abstracting these data from free text might reduce cost and data collection times.
To develop a support vector machine (SVM) classifier capable of identifying a range of procedures and diagnoses in ICU clinical notes for use in risk adjustment.
We selected notes from 2001-2008 for 4191 neonatal ICU (NICU) and 2198 adult ICU patients from the MIMIC-II database from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Using these notes, we developed an implementation of the SVM classifier to identify procedures (mechanical ventilation and phototherapy in NICU notes) and diagnoses (jaundice in NICU and intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) in adult ICU). On the jaundice classification task, we also compared classifier performance using n-gram features to unigrams with application of a negation algorithm (NegEx).
Our classifier accurately identified mechanical ventilation (accuracy=0.982, F1=0.954) and phototherapy use (accuracy=0.940, F1=0.912), as well as jaundice (accuracy=0.898, F1=0.884) and ICH diagnoses (accuracy=0.938, F1=0.943). Including bigram features improved performance on the jaundice (accuracy=0.898 vs 0.865) and ICH (0.938 vs 0.927) tasks, and outperformed NegEx-derived unigram features (accuracy=0.898 vs 0.863) on the jaundice task.
Overall, a classifier using n-gram support vectors displayed excellent performance characteristics. The classifier generalizes to diverse patient populations, diagnoses, and procedures.
SVM-based classifiers can accurately identify procedure status and diagnoses among ICU patients, and including n-gram features improves performance, compared to existing methods.
We describe a project undertaken by an interdisciplinary team combining researchers in sleep psychology and in Natural Language Processing/Machine Learning. The goal is sentiment analysis on a corpus containing short textual descriptions of dreams. Dreams are categorized in a four-level scale of positive and negative sentiments. We chose a four scale annotation to reflect the sentiment strength and simplicity at the same time. The approach is based on a novel representation, taking into account the leading themes of the dream and the sequential unfolding of associated sentiments during the dream. The dream representation is based on three combined parts, two of which are automatically produced from the description of the dream. The first part consists of co-occurrence vector representation of dreams in order to detect sentiment levels in the dream texts. Those vectors unlike the standard Bag-of-words model capture non-local relationships between meanings of word in a corpus. The second part introduces the dynamic representation that captures the sentimental changes throughout the progress of the dream. The third part is the self-reported assessment of the dream by the dreamer according to eight given attributes (self-assessment is different in many respects from the dream’s sentiment classification). The three representations are subject to aggressive feature selection. Using an ensemble of classifiers on the combined 3-partite representation, the agreement between machine rating and the human judge scores on the four scales was 64 % which is in the range of human experts’ consensus in that domain. The accuracy of the system was 14 % more than previous results on the same task.
Using data from 52 in-depth interviews with working-class and professional men and women, I examine gender differences in friendships. Men and women respond to global questions about friendship in culturally specific ways. Men focus on shared activities, and women focus on shared feelings. Responses to questions about specific friends, however, reveal more variation in same-sex friendships than the literature indicates. Men share feelings more, whereas women share feelings less; furthermore, the extent to which they do so varies by class. I argue that conceptualizing gender as an ongoing social construction explains the data better than do psychoanalytic or socialization accounts.
The Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) is a male dominated environment, and for the majority of female cadets who are enrolled in engineering programmes the college represent a doubly non‐traditional environment. Interviews were conducted with the majority of female cadets enrolled in engineering programmes at the college. The female cadets who have succeeded in reaching the third and fourth year of the engineering programmes have indicated that problems with systemic harassment are most severe in the first year of college life. It is apparent that the presence of systemic harassment creates barriers to women entering engineering in the military. This paper attempts to determine the most significant of these barriers and suggests ways in which these barriers may be dismantled. It is believed that the experiences at RMC are similar to those at other military colleges in other countries, and that some of the lessons learned at RMC can be applied to other engineering schools, where women are entering non‐traditional fields.
Purpose
Women continue to be under‐represented at higher levels of management in organisations and on boards throughout Western industrialised countries despite more than 30 years of government policies and organisational practices designed to redress this imbalance. The problem is how to ensure that more women make it to senior positions. This paper seeks to explore one approach to advancing women's careers through a women‐only development program designed for those identified as high‐potential leaders.
Design/methodology/approach
Telephone interviews were conducted with participants from two intakes of the development program. Qualitative data analysis methods were used to identify common words and themes as well as divergent opinions.
Findings
Women‐only development programs provide a safe and supportive environment for improving self‐confidence, learning new skills, and learning from the experiences of successful role models. They are a useful addition to other strategies designed to increase the number of women in senior positions but factors such as organisational culture and career choices also impact on career progress.
Research limitations/implications
The sample size is small and may not be representative of overall program participants. The data rely on self‐reports. Only limited demographic detail was obtained.
Practical implications
Future programs should focus more on helping women identify and tap into existing networks, develop more instrumental networks and access suitable mentors.
Originality/value
The paper identifies social capital as an important element in career advancement and one area where women still lag behind men due to a lack of career enhancing networks and high‐status mentors.
Many women professionals traverse settings beyond the office in their work, but research on women professionals rarely follows them out of the office. Using a large, archived data set of focus groups with sales professionals, the authors ask how work in out-of-the-office settings affects women’s careers. The authors distinguish between two types of settings. In “heterosocial” settings, interaction rules are traditionally and normatively gendered; women and men are understood by others as heterosexually linked pairs, women (and men) become targets of gossip, and some women report sexual advances and sexual harassment. In “homosocial” settings such as golf courses and strip clubs, women’s disadvantage takes the form of exclusion.
This study looked for evidence of cultural stereotypes regarding the different intellectual abilities of men and women. The effects of participants' gender, gender role and the target's sex on the perception of an intelligent person and attitudes towards disclosing high IQ were investigated. Some 121 participants wrote a story following a verbal lead about a highly intelligent male or female. They then answered three questions about IQ disclosure and filled out a Bem Sex Role Inventory. Content analysis showed most differences emerged in participants' views about consequences of high intelligence for one's intimate interpersonal relationships. More negative consequences were predicted for female than male targets. This bias was especially strong for females and feminine participants.
The place of men in reproductive and contraceptive changes and the role of informal social interaction in these processes have become central themes in recent research on fertility change in sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions. These two themes, however, have been treated separately in the literature, and this study bridges them by examining men's informal communication on family planning matters through a gender lens. This analysis, based on qualitative data collected in Greater Maputo, Mozambique, indicates that although men's communication on these matters is limited in comparison to women's communication, it nonetheless plays an important role in the formation of men's reproductive and contraceptive attitudes and preferences. Gender ideology emerges as a powerful delimiter of men's communication circles and of the information transmitted in those circles. The author argues that gender barriers in peer communication affect individuals' perceptions of reproductive and contraceptive matters and their corresponding preferences and decisions.
In Modern Greek conversation, disagreement, which can express power, can also be used to create solidarity among participants. Analysis of a segment of tape-recorded, naturally occurring conversation demonstrates that the three primary speakers are pursuing different frames—that is, they have different purposes in the conversation—and that they have different styles of disagreeing. The Greek man disagrees directly; the Greek woman briefly agrees before going on to disagree; the American woman disagrees indirectly. Analysis of other, briefer excerpts of casual conversation reveals that linguistic marfars of solidarity occur at points of disagreement. These markers are (1) first name or figurative kinship term, often in diminutive form, and (2) personal analogy. Finally, two linguistic markers frequently occur at points of disagreement: (1) the particle «ρε» and (2) what we call "adversative imperatives." This discussion furthers our understanding of the relationship between power and solidarity in conversation in general, and in Modern Greek conversation in particular.
Despite the fact that historians regularly acknowledge the persistence of oral culture in the early modern world, few studies have actually examined how orality, language, and popular speech functioned on a daily basis. This article considers gossip in sixteenth-century Venice. While prescriptive literature from the period unanimously suggested that women were the main practitioners of the disruptive speech of gossip, a close look at trials from the court of the Holy Office reveal that the gender com-ponent of gossip was inherently unstable. Gossip was undoubtedly a weapon of the weak - especially the underclasses and women - who employed its words to gain a level of power not so easily available in the larger city space or through traditional political or legal channels. However, men also gossiped to patrol their neighbour-hoods and workplaces and to direct the outcome of civil politics themselves. Venetian court cases, chronicles broglio legislation, and legal texts all demonstrate that while gossip at times threatened civic peace, it also potentially contributed to Venetian civic stability.
Hospitality research includes many studies that combine and revisit the quantitative–qualitative debate, and review the arguments for and against using mixed-methods. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the application of qualitative methodologies based on the combination of techniques which also include quantitative elements in addition to those pertaining to qualitative techniques. The research aims to specifically identify the most important managerial factors which, from the point of view of hotel chain executives, serve to improve the quality of the service they provide. The techniques used are concept mapping and qualitative optimization, both of which are qualitative methodologies though they include quantitative elements to overcome the subjectivity deficits typically found in qualitative methodologies. In addition, the combination of both techniques leads to greater precision of the results obtained. Our methodological proposal combines concept mapping with qualitative optimisation, thereby improving the prioritisation and hierarchical ordering of the ideas obtained and structured. Instead of working with each cluster’s average score in terms of importance (as defined within the concept mapping model), our contribution is based on prioritising these based on their distance to the optimal reference. This allows for experts’ evaluations of each idea in terms of its importance to not be strictly quantitative, that is, the experts are not obligated to assign numbers to their evaluations; rather, they can assess ideas based on qualitative labels.