Mom Was Right -- If You Don't Have Anything Nice To Say About Someone, Don't Say Anything At All: The Boomerang Effect Of Gossip Is Discovered

In a recent communication, the authors suggest that this phenomenon could play a role in the public's reaction reaction to participants in the recent White House scandal. "For example," they note, "when Kenneth Starr accuses Bill Clinton of perjury, Starr himself may be seen as more deceitful. Similarly, when Linda Tripp claims that Monica Lewinsky had sex with the President, Tripp herself may be seen as more promiscuous. The gist of our research is that when you gossip, you become associated with the characteristics you describe, ultimately leading those characteristics to be 'transferred' to you."

The researchers conducted a series of four studies on the phenomenon they call spontaneous trait transference. Three of the four studies involved participants looking at photographs accompanied by brief statements. In the first study, the statements were ostensibly about someone the person in the photograph knew. In the second, the statements were either about the person in the photograph or about someone else. In the third study, participants were clearly told that the photographs and the statements had nothing to do with each other; they had been paired at random. In the final study, participants watched videotapes of actors answering off-screen questions about themselves or about someone they knew.

Some of the statements accompanying the photographs (or made on the videotape) were designed to elicit a positive or negative trait. For example "cruel" was implied by the statement "He hates animals. Today he was walking to the store and he saw this puppy. So he kicked it out of his way." But consistently through the studies, participants attributed the elicited trait to the speakers, even though these speakers described someone other than themselves. This occurred even when participants were specifically told that there was no connection between the speakers and the statements, suggesting, the authors say, that this phenomenon is irrational and largely outside of conscious awareness.

Article: "Spontaneous Trait Transference: Communicators Take on the Qualities They Describe in Others" by John J. Skowronski, Ph.D., The Ohio State University at Newark; Donal E. Carlston, Ph.D., and Lynda Mae, M.A., Purdue University and Matthew T. Crawford, Indiana University Bloomington in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 74, No. 4.