Purpose Drawing on regulatory focus theory and locus of control theory, this study contributes to the workplace gossip literature by developing and testing a novel theoretical framework that explains how and when negative gossip produces paradoxical consequences for targets. Design/methodology/approach We collaborated with a large internet company in Eastern China and employed a four-wave, two-source design (with a two-week interval) to match 461 employee-supervisor pairs. Time 1 measured negative workplace gossip and internal locus of control, Time 2 measured prevention-oriented cognitive crafting, Time 3 measured interaction avoidance, Time 4 had employees report relational satisfaction, and supervisors assessed problem exposure. Findings Negative gossip stimulates prevention-oriented cognitive crafting in targets, prompting them to adopt interaction-avoidance behaviors, which in turn reduce their interactions with colleagues and superiors, ultimately decreasing relational satisfaction and problem exposure. Internal locus of control plays a significant moderating role in this mechanism. Employees with a high internal locus of control effectively buffer the link between negative gossip and the adoption of prevention-oriented cognitive crafting, thus being less susceptible to this defensive cognitive spiral. Originality/value Departing from prior work focused on immediate affective or reputational impacts, our study reveals how the serial mediation of prevention-oriented cognitive crafting and interaction avoidance transmits negative workplace gossip to two longer-term outcomes: relational satisfaction and problem exposure. Furthermore, we demonstrate that this detrimental pathway is systematically buffered by an internal locus of control. Theoretically, our model integrates regulatory focus and individual differences within a goal–strategy–outcome framework. Methodologically, our four-wave, two-source design mitigates common-method bias.
Qing et al. (Wed,) studied this question.