Rumors and stable-cause attribution in prediction and behavior

Two stock-market simulation experiments investigated the notion that rumors that invoke stable-cause attributions spawn illusory associations and less regressive predictions and behavior. In Study 1, illusory perceptions of association and stable causation (rumors caused price changes on the day after they appeared) existed despite rigorous conditions of nonassociation (price changes were unrelated to rumors). Predictions (recent price trends will continue) and trading behavior (departures from a strong buy-low–sell-high strategy) were both anti-regressive. In Study 2, stability of attribution was manipulated via a computerized tutorial. Participants taught to view price-changes as caused by stable forces predicted less regressively and departed more from buy-low–sell-high trading patterns than those taught to perceive changes as caused by unstable forces. Results inform a social cognitive and decision theoretic understanding of rumor by integrating it with causal attribution, covariation detection, and prediction theory.     

I Heard That … : Do rumors affect hiring decisions?

Misinformation can have a negative impact on decision making. Little empirical attention has, however, been given to the effect of rumors, a type of misinformation, on person judgments. Although rumors have been shown to affect other areas of organizational functioning (e.g., corporate reputation, employee morale), there is a lack of research investigating how rumors may influence hiring decisions. This study argues why rumors may influence hiring decisions by drawing from attribution, social judgment, and judgment and decision making theories, and provides an experimental investigation of this argument. Although participants reported not believing and being less likely to use the rumor, rumors were not discounted when determining if an individual should be hired. In short, results suggest that rumors impacted hiring decisions.     

Ferreting Facts or Fashioning Fallacies? Factors in Rumor Accuracy

In some situations, rumors come to reflect reality quite well and in others they become fantastic. Why? This article summarizes research on rumor accuracy. It considers rumors as unverified statements in circulation, and rumor discussion as serving group sensemaking and threat-management functions. It also explores a complementary view of rumors as memes: adaptive statements that survive or die out. Conceptualizations of rumor accuracy, methods of investigation, prospects for future social psychological study, and accuracy rates are examined. The Percolation Model of rumor accuracy is reviewed: rumor distortions and errors that occur in part because of cognitive limitations and perceptual biases are either compounded by relationship- or self-oriented aims and a circumscribed ability to test the rumor, or countervailed by accuracy motivation, message checking, and veracity checking; rumor activity hastens these processes. The multivariate, interactive, and dynamical systems nature of rumor accuracy phenomena is highlighted. The implications of this research for social epistemics are discussed.     

谣言传播的情境、内容、传播者与受众特征及相关认知神经科学研究

什么样的谣言更容易获取信任、得到传播？面对谣言,为何有人理性批判,有人则毫不犹豫地点“赞”、转发？这是大众和研究者们共同关注的问题。本文主要从情境、内容特征、传播者与受众特征这三个维度论述了影响谣言传播的因素。从情境特征来看,谣言在模糊且具有潜在威胁的情境中更易传播,封闭的舆论场也助长了谣言传播;从内容特征来看,包含适当情绪内容、针对特定对象的谣言更易得到传播;从传播者与受众特征来看,一方面,可靠消息源会增强人们的传播意愿;另一方面,受众的认知局限、人格特质、动机、价值观等,均可能造成认知偏差或歪曲,助长谣言传播。以往研究多采用问卷调查法,今后需要更多严格控制变量的实验研究,从行为和神经层面深入探讨谣言传播的机制。最后,社交媒体数据采集与分析技术的发展,尤其是计算传播学等交叉学科的发展,为谣言传播研究提供了新的思路和方法。     

Psychological Correlates of the Transmission and Acceptance of Rumors About AIDS1

The present investigation was intended to identify the emotional and cognitive factors associated with the transmission and acceptance of widely disseminated misconceptions about AIDS. A rumor questionnaire listing 10 prevalent misconceptions about AIDS was completed by 229 college students. Consistent with predictions derived from current rumor theory (Rosnow, 1980, 1988), anxiety elicited by AIDS rumors was found to be the factor most strongly related to rumor transmission. The subjects who reported having changed their behavior as a result of the AIDS crisis also were likely to transmit AIDS rumors. Regression analysis revealed that, together, personal anxiety elicited by specific rumors and behavior change represented the strongest predictors of AIDS rumor transmission (R²= .24, p < .0001). Anxiety-provoking rumors perceived as important and personally consequential were most likely to be believed (R²= .56, p < .0001). A minority of subjects (12%) reported behavior changes that actually reduce the risk of AIDS. Implications of this research for AIDS public education campaigns are discussed.     

Governing the grapevine: the study of rumor during World War II

Throughout the early 1940s, a host of rumors relating to the Second World War began to circulate, leading the government to establish various committees and undertake multiple projects intended to counteract rumors that were believed to threaten civilian morale and compromise national security. Simultaneously, social scientists also began taking measures to study and combat rumor. Such efforts included the institution of several community groups, deemed "rumor clinics," that aimed to decrease the prevalence of wartime rumor by educating the general public. This article outlines the rise and fall of rumor clinics, focusing specifically on the shifting boundaries and the mounting tensions between the United States government and social scientists in the study of rumor during World War II.     

谣言传播的影响因素及动机机制研究述评

谣言是指一种据称真实但未经证实的普遍流传的说法。谣言会通过社会成员之间的信息传递而影响公众的态度和行为。谣言在传播过程中,既受到个体水平上的认知和情绪变量的影响,也受到群体变量及情境变量的影响。个体传播谣言的心理动机包括寻求事实、关系提升和自我提升。谣言在突发公共事件（自然灾害、事故灾难、公共卫生事件、社会安全事件等）中具有很大的破坏性,在群体性事件中谣言的传播、扩散会使矛盾更加激化,冲突进一步升级。未来的研究需要进一步探查影响谣言传播的群体因素,从群体动力学的角度探究谣言传播的心理机制,并考虑谣言在突发社会事件中传播的特征。     

Children's natural conversations following exposure to a rumor: Linkages to later false reports

Previous research has shown that children naturally propagate overheard false rumors and that the circulation of such information can induce children and their peers to wrongly recall actually experiencing rumored-but-nonexperienced events. The current study extends this work by recording 3- to 6-year-olds' naturally occurring conversations following exposure to an erroneous rumor. Results indicate that, compared with children who overhear rumors spread by adults, those who pick up rumors from peers during natural interactions engage in deeper and more inventive rumor mongering. Moreover, the degree and originality of rumor propagation was linked with various qualities of children's subsequent recollections at both 1-week and 4-week delayed interviews. Furthermore, compared with 3- and 4-year-olds, 5- and 6-year-olds naturally transmitted more novel and coherent embellishments of the rumor to their peers, and more of their false narrative reports during the interviews overlapped with their own and their peers' utterances transmitted soon after the rumor was planted.     

Rape Rumors: The Effects of Reporting or Denying Rumors of Sexual Assaults on Campus1

Two studies examine the effects of reporting rumors of sexual assaults on a college campus. Participants read headlines and short articles about an unfamiliar college. Key headlines and articles reported an increase in sexual assaults as a fact, a rumor, a denied rumor, or a proven falsehood. Participants then rated perceptions of the college, including opinions on the level of crime and safety on campus. Results showed that both reporting the crimes as rumors and reporting denials of the rumors increased concerns compared to control conditions, but these concerns were lower than the concerns raised by reporting the assaults as fact. Findings are in line with predictions and match previous research on rumors and the impact of reported innuendo.     

Social processes affecting the mnemonic consequences of rumors on children’s memory

This research examined whether the impact of overheard rumors on children’s memory for their experiences varies as a function of social processes. The results of two experiments revealed that the very same errant rumor had different consequences for children’s recollections depending on the degree and type of social interactions they had with peers after exposure to the rumor. In both experiments, 3- to 5-year-olds overheard a false rumor about a recently experienced event and then were interviewed about the event 1 week later. In Experiment 1, children were more likely to report experiencing rumored-but-nonoccurring information if they were allowed to interact naturally with peers following exposure to the rumor than if they were prevented from peer exchange. In Experiment 2, exposure to the rumor induced greater memory contamination if it was planted among familiar peers than if it was encountered among strangers.     

The Social Adjustment of Delinquents Who are Unable to Inhibit old Automatic Perceptual Responses

Summary

This study explored rumor transmission as a function of the anxiety of the group exposed to that rumor. Four eight-member groups which were designated either as high anxiety or low anxiety on the basis of scores on the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS) were presented with a rumor through a sociometrically selected individual. Issues relevant to the groups, with basic similarities across all four groups, were selected as the rumors. That these topics were equally important to the individuals involved is testified to by the fact that importance rating on these issues at the conclusion of the study did not differ significantly among the groups. As predicted, the groups that were high anxious when confronted with a rumor of importance transmitted that rumor throughout that group with a higher frequency than did the groups of low anxious members when confronted with an issue of importance. A model of rumor transmission dependent upon anxiety was proposed.     

False rumors and true belief: Memory processes underlying children’s errant reports of rumored events

Previous research has shown that overhearing an errant rumor—either from an adult or from peers—about an earlier experience can lead children to make detailed false reports. This study investigates the extent to which such accounts are driven by changes in children’s memory representations or merely social demands that encourage the reporting of rumored information. This was accomplished by (a) using a warning manipulation that eliminated social pressures to report an earlier heard rumor and (b) examining the qualitative characteristics of children’s false narratives of a rumored-but-nonexperienced event. Findings indicated that overheard rumors can induce sensory and contextual characteristics in memory that can lead children to develop genuine false beliefs in seeing rumored-but-nonexperienced occurrences. Such constructive tendencies were especially likely among 3- and 4-year-olds (relative to 5- and 6-year-olds) and when rumors were picked up from peers during natural social interactions (relative to when they were planted by an adult).     

Coverage-Reliability, Epistemic Dependence, and the Problem of Rumor-Based Belief

Rumors, for better or worse, are an important element of public discourse. The present paper focuses on rumors as an epistemic phenomenon rather than as a social or political problem. In particular, it investigates the relation between the mode of transmission and the reliability, if any, of rumors as a source of knowledge. It does so by comparing rumor with two forms of epistemic dependence that have recently received attention in the philosophical literature: our dependence on the testimony of others, and our dependence on what has been called the ‘coverage-reliability’ of our social environment (Goldberg 2010). According to the latter, an environment is ‘coverage-reliable’ if, across a wide range of beliefs and given certain conditions, it supports the following conditional: If ~p were true I would have heard about it by now. However, in information-deprived social environments with little coverage-reliability, rumors may transmit information that could not otherwise be had. This suggests that a trade-off exists between levels of trust in the coverage-reliability of official sources and (warranted) trust in rumor as a source of information.     

Authoritarianism,Projection, and Person Perception: What Do Authoritarians Infer From Another's Attempt to Rebut a Rumor?

In the course of a field study, subjects first filled out a short form of the California F Scale (Adorno, 1973). In addition, one group of subjects was led to reflect on an episode in which a rumor had proven to be true. Another group of subjects was led to reflect on an episode in which they themselves had been a target of an unjustified accusation. A third (control) group did not undergo a priming procedure. All subjects read a brief newspaper advertisement in which a person issued the warning to take legal proceedings if anyone continued to spread untrue rumors concerning him. Subjects were asked to give reasons why the person initiated the rebuttal. High authoritarians, as identified by their responses to the California F Scale, were more likely than low authoritarians to infer anxiety, paranoia, and guilty conscience as motives for the rebuttal. This effect was particularly pronounced in the two priming conditions. Further, authoritarians evaluated the target person more negatively than did nonauthoritarians. The interpretation of the results dwells on repressive developmental and environmental forces causing the authoritarian style and the role of projection in person perception.     

Mood in foreign exchange trading: Cognitive processes and performance

This paper examines the effects of mood on the behavior of traders or decision makers in financial markets. Based on a review of the psychological theories and empirical findings which relate mood to decision making and information processing, we derive hypotheses with respect to the impact of good, neutral, and bad moods on the behavior of traders. Two experiments (N=66 and 72) were conducted on an Internet platform which simulated foreign exchange trading based on historical market data. The first experiment manipulated mood using feedback and music whereas the second one asked subjects to read mood-laden statements. It was found that traders in a good mood had an inferior trading performance (losing money) compared to those in a neutral or bad mood (making profit). This is because traders in a good mood made less accurate decisions than those in neutral or bad moods. Those in a bad mood were the most accurate in their decisions but behaved conservatively in their trading. Subjects in a good mood tended to make less accurate decisions though they spent on average at least the same time as the other subjects on information processing and decision-making. They also were over-confident taking unwarranted risks. The studies concluded with insights concerning the effects of mood on choice of trading strategies.     

Troubling Consequences of Online Political Rumoring

Fear that the Internet promotes harmful political rumoring is merited but not for reasons originally anticipated. Although the network accelerates and widens rumor circulation, on the whole, it does not increase recipient credulity. E‐mail, however, which fosters informal political communication within existing social networks, poses a unique threat to factual political knowledge. A national telephone survey conducted immediately after the 2008 U.S. presidential election provides evidence that aggregate Internet use promotes exposure to both rumors and their rebuttals, but that the total effect on rumor beliefs is negligible. More troublingly, the data demonstrate that rumors e‐mailed to friends/family are more likely to be believed and shared with others and that these patterns of circulation and belief exhibit strong political biases.     

基于不公平感的谣言对转基因风险评价的影响

谣言是常见的社会现象,但其传播过程的"心理黑箱"还是缺乏探索的问题。在情绪评价理论的基础上,采用对照实验,通过转基因食品情景模拟来考察不公平谣言及辟谣行为对风险认知评价及情绪的影响。结果表明:(1)转基因风险评价产生的情绪可分为后果型和伦理型;(2)不公平感会导致更强烈的伦理型及后果型情绪,并使得被试倾向于高估转基因风险;(3)辟谣对转基因风险评价能起到一定干预作用,但不能完全抵消谣言对情绪的影响。     

社交媒体信任对重大突发公共卫生事件中公众网络谣言自治行为的影响

从社会心理学视角、以社交媒体信任为切入点,基于新冠肺炎疫情,考察公众在重大突发公共卫生事件中网络谣言自治行为的心理机制。采用问卷方法对963名成年居民进行调查。结果表明:(1)公众对官方社交媒体的信任既能直接促进公众的辟谣行为,也能通过增强公众对战胜疫情的信心产生间接影响;(2)公众对官方社交媒体的信任影响公众对自媒体的信任,但自媒体信任不能独立于官媒信任影响辟谣行为。因此,我国社交媒体存在着两个舆论场且官方舆论占主导地位,及时、有效的官方报道不仅能提高公众对战胜疫情的信心,也能促进公众网络谣言自治,进而实现网络谣言治理主体的多元化。     

When social psychology became less social: Prasad and the history of rumor research

Rumor research, in general, and its delayed incorporation of the work of rumor researcher Jamuna Prasad, in particular, exemplify how the intellectual climate of American social psychology discouraged the development of social approaches. In the present paper, we explain his conceptualization of how rumors start and spread, and explore findings from subsequent research supporting or negating his propositions. It is our contention that, although Prasad had identified the basic variables involved in rumor generation and transmission correctly, mainstream social psychological research in the 1940s did not incorporate his contributions. Instead, mirroring the Zeitgeist of American social psychology, rumor research was approached from a predominantly individual level of analysis. In the present paper, the authors have tried to resurrect some of the group-level variables from Prasad's treatment of rumor and to suggest that social psychology adopt a more 'social' approach to rumor.