The behavior that is meant to harm the social standing of another person through activities such as gossiping and spreading rumors is termed as proactive relational aggression.
Explanation:
The behavior that is meant to harm other individual is termed as aggression. The aggression or hate of an individual over other individual leads to harm him.
The aggression can be classified in three types. They are reactive-expressive aggression, reactive-inexpressive aggression and proactive relation aggression.
The reactive-expression aggression is the behavior where the aggressive individual harms the target by direct verbal abuse on the person in private and public. It can extent to physical torture also.
The reactive-inexpressive aggression is the behavior where the aggressive person is unable to express their aggression to the corresponding person instead, they show their aggression on an individual or a group of individual who are weaker compared to the aggressive person.
The proactive-relational aggression is a behavior where the aggressive person harms the social status or image of the target by spreading false rumors about the person.