Men who gossip around the office watercooler could be hurting their chances of climbing the corporate ladder.
That’s according to a new study by researchers at the University of Iowa and the University of New Mexico, which found that men who gossip are perceived as less competent and less qualified for leadership roles than women who engage in the same behavior.
“Men when they engage in gossip, they tend to be judged a lot more harshly than women,” Trevor Spoelma, an associate professor of management and entrepreneurship at the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business, told Fortune.
The researchers reached that conclusion through three studies: an observation of 272 undergraduate students working in five-person teams on a class project, followed by two online experiments involving roughly 450 U.S. workers.
Across the studies, people who gossiped received lower competence ratings, but men faced a steeper penalty than women.
Gossip has existed as a social practice for centuries, but the word itself took on a more negative connotation around the 16th century, when it became increasingly associated with women spreading rumors. That history may help explain the gender double standard. When men gossip about a third party, they can be seen as violating traditional expectations of how men should behave, Spoelma said. For women, the behavior may be viewed as more consistent with longstanding gender stereotypes.
Gossip can foster a sense of belonging—but men are penalized in their career more
Negative gossip, Spoelma added, can involve questioning a colleague’s abilities, criticizing their work, or sharing an unflattering story about them. But gossip isn’t always necessarily malicious. It can also mean complimenting a colleague or sharing a harmless anecdote about someone who isn’t in the room.
In some cases, both forms of gossip can have benefits to employees by fostering trust and a sense of belonging.
“You’re suddenly in on something that supposedly not everyone’s in on. You become part of that inner circle,” psychologist Scott Lyons previously told Fortune. “You feel special. You feel like you matter.”
That sense of connection could be particularly valuable as hybrid work enables employees to collaborate less face-to-face. And amid a broader loneliness crisis among men, informal workplace interactions can offer another way to build meaningful relationships with colleagues.
But while men tend to receive more leniency than women when their behavior violates social norms or is perceived as unusual, gossip appears to be an exception, Spoelma said.
“A lot of times, men receive a pass compared to women for different norm-violating behaviors,” he told Fortune. “But specifically, when it comes to gossip, that’s an instance where we see this penalty.”
Richard Branson and Ray Dalio hate workplace gossip. Dave Ramey says he’ll even fire you
Despite employees enjoying gossip, some of the world’s most prominent business leaders have made clear they don’t think it has a place in the workplace.
Billionaire co-founder of Virgin Group Richard Branson, for example, has long championed a philosophy of avoiding speaking poorly of others.
“If I ever hear anybody gossiping, I will walk away because it’s just not good,” he told LinkedIn in 2024.
“Everything comes back to people, people, people.“Are you good with people? Are you good at drawing out the best in people?”
Ray Dalio, the billionaire founder of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, has echoed that talking about people behind their backs in the workplace is counterproductive.
“You shouldn’t talk behind somebody’s back or gossip,” he said in an interview with the Academy of Achievement in 2012.
“Too many people talk about the other people, what they’re doing wrong,” Dalio explained. “Except they don’t talk to those people about what they’re doing wrong. So they don’t know whether they’re actually doing them wrong or not. They haven’t heard the other side and they’re not being productive. So that’s terrible.”
Personal finance radio show host Dave Ramsey has gone so far to make “No Gossip” one of the 14 values of his company, Ramsey Solutions.
“One of our core values is, I will fire you for being a gossip. I just did it and I’ll do it again,” he said on his EntreLeadership show in 2024.
Workplace disagreements and frustrations are inevitable, Ramsey acknowledged, but employees have a responsibility not to make them worse by spreading negativity among colleagues.
“You have one option at Ramsey. You must hand your negatives up to someone in leadership who can do something about it,” he said. “But if you hand your negatives down or sideways, that’s called gossip. I’ll warn you once maybe, but we’ll probably just fire you.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
