The modern workplace's increasing interdependence have made proactive helping vital for fostering collaboration. However, research has rarely explored subordinates' responses to supervisors' proactive helping, overlooking its positive and negative implications for subordinates. This study theorizes that receiving supervisors’ proactive helping simultaneously triggers feelings of self-threat and gratitude, leading subordinates to engage in negative and positive gossip about their supervisors, respectively. Grounded in attribution theory, the study identifies subordinates’ altruistic attributions as a critical boundary condition that shapes their psychological experiences and subsequent behavioral responses to supervisors’ proactive helping. Using a daily experience sampling method, data were collected from 323 employees across various industries over ten consecutive workdays, resulting in 2584 matched daily responses. The results indicate that: (1) Subordinates’ receipt of proactive helping increases feelings of self-threat, which subsequently enhances negative gossip about supervisors; however, this effect is attenuated when subordinates attribute supervisors’ behaviors to altruistic motives; (2) Supervisors’ proactive helping also elicits gratitude in subordinates, leading to increased positive gossip about supervisors. These findings advance the understanding of supervisors’ proactive helping and the dynamics of workplace gossip, offering valuable theoretical contributions and practical implications
