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APA-Rumor-Psychology-Social-And-Organizational-Approaches-.Pdf Rumor Psychology Social and Organizational Approaches Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia American Psychological Association • Washington, DC Copyright © 2007 by the American Psychological Association. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, including, but not limited to, the process of scanning and digitization, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by American Psychological Association 750 First Street, NE Washington, DC 20002 www.apa.org To order APA Order Department P.O. Box 92984 Washington, DC 20090-2984 Tel: (800) 374-2721; Direct: (202) 336-5510 Fax: (202) 336-5502; TDD/TTY: (202) 336-6123 Online: www.apa.org/books/ E-mail: [email protected] In the U.K., Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, copies may be ordered from American Psychological Association 3 Henrietta Street Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU England Typeset in Meridien by World Composition Services, Inc., Sterling, VA Printer: Hamilton Printing, Castleton, NY Cover Designer: Naylor Design, Washington, DC Technical/Production Editor: Tiffany L. Klaff The opinions and statements published are the responsibility of the authors, and such opinions and statements do not necessarily represent the policies of the American Psychological Association. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data DiFonzo, Nicholas. Rumor psychology : social and organizational approaches / Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-59147-426-5 ISBN-10: 1-59147-426-4 1. Rumor. 2. Social psychology. 3. Organizational behavior. I. Bordia, Prashant. II. Title. HM1241.D54 2007 302.2'4—dc22 2006009552 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record is available from the British Library. Printed in the United States of America First Edition Dedicated to Mary Josephine DiFonzo and Manjula Bordia. Contents ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX INTRODUCTION 3 1 Defining Rumor 11 2 Forms, Frequency, and Fallout of Rumors 35 3 Psychological Factors in Rumor Spread 69 4 Factors Associated With Belief in Rumor 89 5 Rumor as Sense Making 113 6 Rumor Accuracy: Patterns of Content Change, Conceptualization, and Overall Accuracy 133 7 Mechanisms Facilitating Rumor Accuracy and Inaccuracy 159 8 Trust and Organizational Rumor Transmission 185 9 Rumor Management 205 10 Summary, Model, and Research Agenda 229 REFERENCES 261 AUTHOR INDEX 277 SUBJECT INDEX 283 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 291 VII Acknowledgments everal people have been especially helpful in the production of this volume. We are particularly indebted to Ralph L. Rosnow, our ever-helpful colleague and mentor at Temple University, a true pioneer in the study of rumor transmis- sion. We also thank Charles Walker of St. Bonaventure Uni- versity for his perspicacious advice on chapter 1. We thank the anonymous corporation, including workers, question- naire administrators, and management, who participated in the longitudinal survey described in chapters 2 and 8. Credit with regard to this project is particularly due to Rob Winter- korn for his determined—and successful—efforts in data collection. We thank H. Taylor Buckner and Frederick Koenig for their comments on chapters 6 and 7. We appreci- ate comments on a draft of chapter 8 made by Kurt Dirks, Chip Heath, and Ralph L. Rosnow. We thank Eric K. Foster, Holly Horn, Frederick Koenig, Mark Pezzo, Charles Walker, Sarah Wert, and John Yost for consistently stimulating our thinking about rumor and gossip via the electronic discus- sion group, [email protected]. The first author (DiFonzo) acknowledges funding to assist in the preparation of this volume from two sources at Rochester Institute of Technology: the College of Liberal Arts Faculty Education and Development Fund and the Provost's Faculty Leave Fund. Research reported in chapter 9 was funded by the Australian Research Council and the University of Queensland Foundation. We are grateful to collaborators past and present. We thank Simon Lloyd Restubog and IX x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Bernd Irmer for help at various stages in the preparation of this manu- script. We thank Emily Leonard, development editor, and Tiffany Klaff, production editor, in the Books department at the American Psycholog- ical Association, and two anonymous peer reviewers for their helpful comments on a draft of this volume. Rumor Psychology Introduction We are swimming in rumors. —Manager at a small company facing severe downsizing Tropical Fantasy Fruit Punch contains a substance that causes black men to become sterile. —False rumor circulating in New York City that caused sales to plummet 70% (Freedman, 1991) Israel warned 4000 Jews not to report for work at the World Trade Center on September llth, 2001. —False rumor circulating among anti-Zionist groups (Hari, 2002; U.S. Department of State, 2005) umors are an enduring feature of social and organizational landscapes. They attract attention, evoke emotion, incite involvement, affect attitudes and actions—and they are ubiquitous. A small example includes the groundless rumors R that McDonald's uses worm meat in its hamburgers grounded sales in Atlanta (Goggins, 1979). Sober reports that Paul McCartney was dead were discussed with sadness and snowballed, even after a photo and interview with a very much alive McCartney was published in LIFE magazine (Rosnow, 1991). Office scuttlebutt often eats away at trust— and feeds on distrust—among organizational members (DiFonzo, Bordia, & Rosnow, 1994). False rumors that a Haitian coup leader was to be set free spurred angry riots that killed 10 people ("10 Die in Haiti," 1991). Seven million people heard the incorrect claim that Coca-Cola contains 4 RUMOR PSYCHOLOGY carcinogens (Kapferer, 1989). Two bizarre and fallacious rumors, wide- spread in Africa, were that the AIDS virus was developed in a western laboratory, and that a World Health Organization team inoculated 100,000 Africans with an untested vaccine that caused the continent's pandemic of AIDS (Lynch, 1989). Harmful or potentially harmful ru- mors reach the ears of top corporate public relations personnel nearly once per week on average (DiFonzo & Bordia, 2000). E-mailed computer-related hoaxes, such as the "Good Times" virus that will rewrite one's hard drive and the "teddy bear" icon that destroys your whole system, regularly alarm novice Internet users (Bordia & DiFonzo, 2004; "JDBGMGR.EXE," 2002). The catalog continues in abundance; rumors flourish, fascinate, and frustrate. It is not surprising then that the record of scholarly interest in the psychology of rumor is long and illustrious; for over 7 decades social and organizational researchers in psychology and sociology have researched rumor. Some brief highlights we note include the early and substantial work of Jamuna Prasad (1935) who studied rumors circulating after a cataclysmic Indian earthquake. Interest in the subject of rumor psychol- ogy peaked during World War II and rumor researchers included such well-known social psychologists as Floyd H. Allport, Kurt Back, Dorwin Cartwright, Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter, and John Thibaut (e.g., F. H. Allport & Lepkin, 1945; Back et al, 1950; Festinger et al, 1948; Schachter & Burdick, 1955). The standard work during this period was G. W. Allport and Leo J. Postman's The Psychology of Rumor published in 1947. The eminent Tamotsu Shibutani published the landmark socio- logical treatise Improvised News: A Sociological Study of Rumor in 1966. Ralph L. Rosnow and his associates refined the conceptual understand- ing of rumor and systematically investigated the dynamics of rumor transmission in the latter decades of the 20th century (e.g., Jaeger, Anthony, & Rosnow, 1980; Rosnow, 1974, 1980, 1988, 1991; Rosnow, Esposito, & Gibney, 1988; Rosnow & Fine, 1976; Rosnow & Georgoudi, 1985; Rosnow, Yost, & Esposito, 1986). Other social and organizational psychologists and sociologists contributed significantly to the body of knowledge regarding rumor as well during this period (e.g., K. Davis, 1972; Fine, 1992; Kapferer, 1987/1990; Knopf, 1975; Koenig, 1985; Morin, 1971; Pratkanis & Aronson, 1991; P. A. Turner, 1993; R. H. Turner & Killian, 1972). And within the past decade, social and organi- zational psychologists have paid increased attention to this topic (e.g., R. S. Baron, David, Brunsman, & Inman, 1997; Bordia & DiFonzo, 2002, 2004, 2005; Bordia, DiFonzo, & Schulz, 2000; Bordia & Rosnow, 1998; DiFonzo & Bordia, 1997, 2002b, 2006, in press; DiFonzo, Bordia, & Winterkorn, 2003; DiFonzo et al., 1994; Fine, Heath, & Campion- Vincent, 2005; Fiske, 2004; Heath, Bell, &• Sternberg, 2001; Houmanfar & Johnson, 2003; Kimmel, 2004a, 2004b; Michelson & Mouly, 2004; Introduction 5 Pendleton, 1998; Pratkanis & Aronson, 2001; Rosnow, 2001; Rosnow & Foster, 2005). Indeed, an electronic discussion group of scholars interested in both rumor and gossip research was formed in 2003 (Rumor- [email protected]).' Therefore, some of what is known about rumor is quite old and some of it is quite new; and so rumor theory is due for synthesis into an updated whole. That is our first purpose in writing this book. We have made a concerted effort to integrate and update findings from all phases of rumor's long research history. Such a work is very much needed; during a recent electronic discussion among social psycholo- gists, the topic of post-9/11
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