Gossip and counselling: The tendency to gossip and its relation to vocational interests

Abstract In this study we attempted to treat gossip as a psychological disposition related to vocational interests, using a newly developed instrument, the Tendency to Gossip Questionnaire (TGQ). One hundred and twenty Israeli students (58 females, 62 males) at the Haifa Technion and the University of Haifa were administered the TGQ together with the Social Desirability Scale and the Ramak-Vocational Interests Questionnaire. We found that: (a) women tended to report that they gossiped more than men did, but this difference was confined to one specific content area of gossip only; and (b) interest in people-oriented professions was related to the tendency to gossip even when social desirability and gender were controlled for statistically. The last finding supports the ‘spillover’ hypothesis (Staines, 1980) on the relationship between vocational and avocational interests. The positive relationship between the tendency to gossip and an interest in people-oriented professions might mean that both derive from...

[1]  D. Super,et al.  The Psychology of Careers. , 1959 .

[2]  Ralph L. Rosnow,et al.  Gossip and The Marketplace Psychology. , 1977 .

[3]  Joyce Sprafkin,et al.  Sex on TV: A Content Analysis. , 1977 .

[4]  S. Schein.  Used and abused: Gossip in medieval society. , 1994 .

[5]  Graham L. Staines,et al.  Spillover Versus Compensation: A Review of the Literature on the Relationship Between Work and Nonwork , 1980 .

[6]  E. Colson,et al.  The Makah Indians , 1953 .

[7]  L. Gottfredson.  Circumscription and Compromise: A Developmental Theory of Occupational Aspirations. , 1981 .

[8]  A. Roe.  The psychology of occupations. , 1957 .

[9]  Ulf Hannerz,et al.  Gossip, networks and culture in a black American ghetto* , 1967 .

[10]  J. Levin,et al.  Gossip: The Inside Scoop , 1987 .

[11]  E. I. Meir,et al.  Congruency, consistency, and differentiation of vocational interests as predictors of vocational satisfaction and preference stability , 1978 .

[12]  John Price-Wilkin,et al.  Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.) , 1991 .

[13]  M. Gluckman,et al.  Papers in Honor of Melville J. Herskovits: Gossip and Scandal , 1963, Current Anthropology.

[14]  R. Burchfield.  Oxford English dictionary , 1982 .

[15]  J. L. Holland,et al.  Making Vocational Choices: A Theory of Careers , 1973 .

[16]  Gary Alan Fine,et al.  Rumor and Gossip: The Social Psychology of Hearsay , 1976 .

[17]  Alexander R. Rysman.  How the "gossip" became a woman. , 1977 .

[18]  E. Bordin,et al.  An articulated framework for vocational development. , 1963 .

[19]  L. Festinger.  A Theory of Social Comparison Processes , 1954 .

[20]  The Psychology of Gossip , 1963, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association.

[21]  Gary Alan Fine,et al.  Gossip, Gossipers, Gossiping , 1978 .

[22]  A. Barak,et al.  A simple instrument for measuring vocational interests based on Roe's classification of occupations , 1974 .

[23]  Jerry Suls,et al.  Gossip as Social Comparison , 1977 .

[24]  Jack Levin,et al.  An exploratory analysis of sex differences in gossip , 1985 .