Malicious mouths? The Dark Triad and motivations for gossip

•We investigated how the Dark Triad relates to gossip motivations.•Psychopathy and narcissism related to diverse gossip motivations.•Secondary psychopathy was a unique predictor of group protection gossip.

There are several reasons for why people may be motivated to engage in gossip, such as group protection, status enhancement, and social bonding. In an on-line study (N = 372), we investigated how individual differences affect gossiping behaviour by examining the relationship between the Dark Triad (i.e., primary and secondary psychopathy, narcissism and Machiavellianism) and motivations to gossip. Correlational analyses indicated that psychopathy and narcissism had a positive relationship with social enjoyment, group protection, and negative influence gossip, whereas Machiavellianism was positively correlated with only negative influence gossip. When we controlled for shared variance between the Dark Triad traits, secondary psychopathy emerged as a positive predictor of group protection gossip. The findings are discussed within an evolutionary framework, along with directions for future research.