Gossip: How the Relationship with the Source Shapes the Retransmission of Personal Content

Consumers love gossiping about celebrities. It is a big part of our social interaction and is all over the media, both mainstream and social. The influence of celebrities in consumer’s lives is undeniable (Thomson 2006). Much of what is being tweeted is the content of celebrities’ lives; in addition, news feeds and tweets are filled of frivolous stories about famous persons (Zhao et al. 2011). Previous research on gossip has shown that people love to talk about other people; after self-disclosure, talking about absent third parties is the most common topic of conversation (Emler 1990). Further, a considerable amount of content shared in people’s lives is not self-generated, but passed on. In this research, we focus on content that originates with one individual and is shared by a different individual, and investigate what makes people prone to retransmit personal content about someone else. We propose the retransmission of personal content (colloquially considered gossiping) can be explained by the sharer’s relationship with the source of the content. We demonstrate that, when facing the choice of whether or not to retransmit personal information, the individual is pulled in opposing directions by two concerns, the perceived guilt of sharing something presumably private versus the perceived arousal of the content. How guilty and aroused one feels depends on the relationship that an individual has with the source of the content. On the one hand, sharing personal information about someone is generally seen as immoral, violating privacy norms. On the other hand, what makes personal information more arousing is its private nature. We demonstrate that personal information about famous persons (i.e., celebrities) is more likely to be shared because consumers experience lower guilt and higher arousal. By studying an overlooked type of content heavily shared by consumers and by focusing on human brands, we provide contribution to both gossip and WOM literatures.