Political Rumors around the Watercooler Part 1: Uncertainty by Nicholas DiFonzo:

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The 2008 election has seen a plethora of false, derogatory and damaging rumors. Some of the most common falsehoods: Barack Obama is a Muslim. Sarah Palin is Trig's grandmother. John McCain had an affair with an attractive lobbyist.

My hoaxbuster site friends tell me that tales about Senator Obama-that he refuses to pledge allegiance to the flag, swore his oath of office on a Koran, was trained in a terrorist camp, and receives major funding from Arabs-far outnumbered those targeting other politicians. That is, until Sarah Palin stepped on the national stage.

Since then we have witnessed an explosion of rumors about Governor Palin-some of which were fueled by premature stories in major newspapers: she's part of a group that wants Alaska to secede from the Union, she tried to ban Harry Potter books from Wasilla Library, she pushed for creationism to be part of the high school science curriculum in Alaska, and she called Obama "Sambo." All false.

What can explain the prevalence of these rumors? I'd like to focus on one answer to that question in this post, and apply some of the rumor psychology I explored in The Watercooler Effect.

The short answer is: one part uncertainty, one part belief, and one part defensive sentiment. And possibly one part propaganda. Today let's tackle uncertainty.

One part Uncertainty

Uncertainty is the psychological state of doubt, of being filled with questions about what events mean or what will happen in the future. In situations that are ambiguous-or as sociologists say "undefined"-uncertainty abounds.

Most people find this uncertainty unpleasant, and have an inborn need to sort things out. Rumor is what happens when we sort things out together. A rumor is an unverified informational statement that circulates about a topic that people perceive as important. When uncertain, people speculate, hypothesize, and pass around informal explanations-that is, they pass around rumor.

Senator Obama and Governor Palin are both relative newcomers to the political scene; hence they are a more vulnerable to this speculation, inaccuracy, and innuendo. Because most of us haven't heard of them until recently, ambiguity abounds: Who are they? What are they like? What have they done? What have they said? What do they stand for? What are their values?

The "Obama-is-a-Muslim" rumor builds upon questions created in part by Obama's unusual middle name-Hussein-which unfortunately for the Senator happens to be the name of a famous late Iraqi dictator. Some people naturally wonder: why does a Christian have a middle name commonly bestowed on men of Islamic background? The answer is really quite simple: Obama's grandfather took the name when he converted to Islam, and it was handed down to Barack even though his family wasn't very religious. Another uncertainty stems from a well-known photograph passed around on the Internet of Obama's grade school registration stating that he was a Muslim. How could that be? According to the Obama campaign, the school made an error-very plausible given the school's Islamic majority.

The Trig-is-Sarah's-grandson rumor capitalizes on uncertainty created in part by Governor Palin's rather quick maternal delivery. She didn't look very pregnant until late in her pregnancy; How come? Again, the answer is pretty banal: we've all known some women who don't seem to "show" much and are back on the job as soon as the baby is born. It's almost as though their children were spontaneously generated. Governor Palin is apparently one of these hardy specimens.

If you think of your own life, you'll quickly see that it has it has some curious features. Why are you so tall and all of your siblings are of average height? Despite the fact that the chances of that happening randomly are good, one could look on that anomaly and be tempted to create an explanatory rumor: "I heard that Arthur was adopted." If you were running for President or VeeP it might become grist for the rumor mill. Something about each of us is unusual. Most people have at least some curious features associated with them. Obama has an unusual middle name; Palin had an unusually quick delivery. Life is rarely without loose ends. Rumors capitalize upon these loose ends and try to tie them up.

The uncertainty is compounded by a loss of confidence in official sources of information. Before the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), news was carefully monitored and controlled by the government; anything contrary to official Soviet policy was not published. Not surprisingly, the official news was distrusted. Political scientists Raymond A. Bauer and David B. Gleicher chronicled how rumors were extensively relied on by Soviet citizens in the 1930s and 1940s. Between 1950 and 1951, these researchers conducted over 300 oral interviews with Soviet refugees living in Europe or the United States. Although rumors were derogated by the government, they flourished. Sixty-six percent of the persons who listed word-of-mouth as a regular source of information also considered it to be their most important source of information. This measure of how "potent" or "salient" a source of information was indicated that rumors were more potent than all other sources of information, including newspapers (48 percent), radio (24 percent), meetings (11 percent), and personal observation (36 percent). In other words, in an environment where official news could not be trusted, word-of-mouth information-in large part rumors-was the most powerful.

I fear that we are approaching a similar state of affairs, not because the state controls the media, but because over half of Americans distrust the press. A recent Harris poll found that 54% of American stated that they tended not to trust the press, while only 30% said they did. The distrust is somewhat stronger among Republicans than Democrats, but is nonetheless substantial across the political spectrum.

The inevitable result: greater reliance on unofficial sources of information, word-of-mouth, and rumor.

Read Nicholas DiFonzo's article "Rumor Has It..." in the New York Post

Nicholas DiFonzo, The Watercooler Effect, current affairs, politics, elections, rumors, social science, psychology, books, Penguin Books