Billionaires Ray Dalio and Richard Branson hate workplace gossip—but men who do it could face a steeper career penalty than women, study finds

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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,…

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