The rumour is arguably the fastest spreading form of information there is. That’s because rumours, by their very nature, motivate tellers to blab before the speculation becomes stale and motivate listeners to grab if they’ve been left in the dark; rumours are the speediest of memes. If there is an information vacuum surrounding a ominous person or looming decision, as examples, then rumours may be the only thing that outsiders have to shed light on the subject. Organisational executives who don’t want information about a touchy subject to leak may demand “zipped lips” and “battened-down hatches” but that only fuels the rumour mill. Especially with the advent of the blogosphere and online discussion forums, those outside of the loop are pooling what they know and circulating speculation. Even reputable news organisations are now rumour mongering as a substitute for expensive reportage. If a low-brow news outlet is spreading a rumour, a high-brow news outlet can simply report that a competitor is peddling the rumour as a way to avoid being completely scooped … while not appearing too unseemly. The rumour mills are replicating.

Like it or not, we all rely on rumours from time to time in order to cope with uncertainty or keep abreast of fast-changing situations. Savvy consumers of information need to keep a couple of thing in mind. First, there is a need to distinguish between unsubstantiated rumour and substantiated claims, or between rumour and other forms of prattle. The boundaries between those things can get fuzzy. Second, there is a need to understand our vulnerability to rumour. There are cases when rumours can be accurate and the best source of information available. What are those cases? And how does the information we rely on get distorted? Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia have written Rumor Psychology to answer those questions and a long list of others.

Rumor Psychology: Social and Organizational Approaches by Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia (American Psychological Association, 2007), pp. ix, 292.

According to the authors, rumours are “unverified and instrumentally relevant information statements in circulation that arise in contexts of ambiguity, danger, or potential threat and that function to help people make sense and manage risk.” (p. 13) Rumours can also have secondary functions, such as entertainment and the maintenance of community norms. The rumour differs from news insofar as news is confirmed in some way. Rumours can also be deliberately planted with false or misleading information (misinformation). In contrast, gossip is banter about individuals that is evaluative and helps to build social bonds. Here the authors emphasize the role of gossip in building social networks and group solidarity. Gossip may or may not be substantiated or trivial, but rumour is always unsubstantiated and about subjects of relative importance. (Hence, the term “unsubstantiated gossip” is redundant.) The authors also make a distinction between rumour and urban legend (or urban myth), which is a story with themes that propagate mores and values. An urban legend spreads if it is odd, amusing, or spectacular in some way.

There are several factors that affect the circulation of rumours. Uncertainty, importance of the subject-matter, anxiety, and lack of control can motivate fact-finding activity. People who are building social relationships will share rumours as a way of promoting personal status and prestige. Rumours may be spread maliciously to deceive an opponent or a strategically important audience, as is often the case in wartime. Rumour spreading may boost an individual’s self-esteem and help maintain a set of personal beliefs (justification construction), such as spreading rumours about a racial group in order to justify a prejudice. According to DiFonzo & Bordia, conceptual factors are also at play. The existence of mutual reinforcing rumours or widely repeated rumours can promote greater spread. The lack of trust within an organisation can promote rumour mongering, although bonds of trust can also have a mediating effect if potential causes of rumours are not very serious. The social status of the source of the rumour can determine the spread, such as when a trusted news source reports a rumour. Conversely, rebutting a harmful rumour is best done by a disinterested party. If you’ve been discredited in the eyes of the audience (like, say, a tobacco company), you best not rebut a rumour yourself (hence the investment in third-party advocacy groups, a.k.a. “astroturf”, by companies with dirty hands, I would note). Finally, the substance of the rumour will determine spread: a well crafted rumour will travel.

As the authors argue, rumours are distortions insofar as they are prepackaged, ready-made explanations. Rumours usually assume stable causes rather than chance (stable cause attribution bias). This often leads to erroneous relationships between variables (illusory associations). People assume that the next event in a sequence will jive with a larger trend (anti-regressive predictions). Rumours also pander to local beliefs and phrasiology (anchoring bias), prejudices, and stereotypes. They are also more likely to focus tension and responsibility on a scapegoat. These biases often find their way in rumours. However, the most fascinating part of DiFonzo & Bordia’s discussion of distortions relates to how rumours change as they move from person to person. Rumours can lose detail and length (leveling or condensation). They can gain new information and details (adding or snowballing). Certain aspects of the rumours messaging can be highlighted (sharpening). Or the rumour may be altered to better conform to an individuals outlook (assimilation). When rumours are spreading along serial conversational chains, then leveling is more likely. Adding is more likely when people get together in a group to figure out an ambiguous situation. The book offers a few additional insights along those lines.

For those in organisations, it is interesting to note that studies show that rumours can be “very accurate” (the authors words), especially those which travel through a trusted network. I suspect that the executives in the audience are breathing a sigh of relief at that news given that they are highly reliant on their grapevine. I’m not too surprised by this finding given that rumours are a currency among managers and executives, with false rumours potentially splashing back on those who told them. Yet, I think that DiFonzo & Bordia need to draw from a broader base of evidence before making such a pat claim (they are meticulous in citing their sources, by the way). They acknowledge that rumours are a means of political influence and subterfuge but such topics don’t surface much in rumour studies, it would seem.

With the shoe on the other foot, what if you’re an executive who is trying to shut down a rumour because it is harmful to herself or the organisation? DiFonzo & Bordia map out the various responses. Perhaps unsurprisingly, most people rely more on rebuttals and less on reducing the original source of anxiety. Promoting scepticism, generating trust, launching counter-propaganda, and issuing spankings (threats, investigations, and lawsuits) are a major part of the repertoire. More extreme measures include round-the-clock “rumour control centres”, removing doors from managers’ offices, and preventing idleness among employees. These are all listed as reducing belief in rumours or reducing uncertainty, but not much else is disclosed. We get no sense of what works better and what the fallout of the various options might be. I don’t know whether the removal of managers’ doors is more akin to a frat-boy college-prank or the whims of a paranoid executive.

Overall, Rumour Psychology is an excellent roundup of the empirical literature on the nature of rumours. By the end of the book, however, DiFonzo & Bordia create an integrative model that is one of the worst slideware graphics I’ve ever seen. You’ve probably seen such graphics before: puzzle pieces and circles connected with several types of arrows that represent unstated relationships; squares, circles, and thought-bubbles that group things together, until one overlaps another and you’re left wondering what that means; and so forth. It makes me wonder whether this is the result of (a.) a lack of conceptual clarity about how it all fits together, (b.) an unhealthy dependence on PowerPoint, or (c.) all of the above. Aside from this anticlimax, the book is a great source if you first acknowledge that it is very much a textbook in format (and price). That means it comes with a fair amount of formalism and repetition, not to mention several data-heavy appendices.

My only disappoint relates to how the authors’ text-book formalism affected the content. As my preface implies, the boundaries between news and rumour are becoming blurred, mainly because news organisations are doing less and less to confirm the accuracy of stories. News organisations are also publishing fewer stories and more information snippets containing claims, with many claims left largely unsubstantiated. This is left undiscussed. This gives the book a somewhat antiseptic quality: untouched by the messiness of media industry change. I would add: untouched by the messiness of organisational change, too. Despite the authors’ emphasis on organisational rumours, they don’t discuss the social context much beyond information availability and organisational culture. For example, are there generalisations to be made about rumours during common types of organizational change (mergers, acquisitions, down-sizings, breakups, etc.)? These are questions for the inevitable second edition, perhaps.

Review by Peter Stoyko