When is gossiping wrong? The influence of valence and relationships on children’s moral evaluations of gossip
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Gossip is a common social activity that children admit to engaging in. Although children disapprove of negative gossip (Kuttler, Parker, & La Greca, 2002, Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 48, 105), less is known about how it is perceived morally compared to positive gossip and how this changes developmentally as children enter adolescence. Interestingly, misbehaviours are evaluated differently depending on who commits the act and whom it targets (Slomkowski & Killen, 1992, International Journal of Behavioral Development, 15, 247), but this has not been examined in the context of gossip. This study examined children's moral evaluations of negative and positive valence gossip and how this changed depending on the listener's relationship to the sharer and target. Children (N = 134, ages 8-16) completed vignettes, evaluating the sharer's action from the listener's perspective, a 2 (valence: negative/positive) × 4 (relationship type: friend/unfamiliar classmate of the sharer and target) design. Additionally, the gossip topic was about the target's behaviour with consequences for him/herself or another (target behaviour type: individual/relational vignettes). The main findings revealed that negative gossip in the sharer-classmate, target-friend condition was rated most negatively. Furthermore, in the individual vignettes condition, positive gossip in the sharer-friend, target-friend condition was rated more negatively than the sharer-classmate, target-friend condition. Girls rated negative gossip more negatively than boys, and adolescents rated gossip more positively than children. Overall, this research allows us to better understand when gossip is viewed as acceptable or unacceptable during an important developmental period. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Children gossip about others negatively but disapprove of negative gossip. Children and adolescents evaluate negative and positive behaviour differently. Children evaluate transgressions differently depending on who commits them and whom the target is. What does this study add? Adolescents believe that positive gossip is more socially acceptable compared to children. Gossip shared by a classmate that targets a friend is rated negatively. Girls view negative gossip as less acceptable compared to boys.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.015 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".