Political Rumors around the Watercooler Part 2: Belief by Nicholas DiFonzo

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This week I'm exploring the rumor psychology surrounding the phenomenal rumors that surround the 2008 U.S. Presidential elections. The most common of these is that Barack Obama is a Muslim and Sarah Palin is Trig's grandmother. What it is that drives these, and the many other, false and fantastic rumors?

My short answer is: one part uncertainty, one part belief, and one part defensive sentiment. And possibly one part propaganda. In the first post I explored how these rumors capitalize on uncertainty. Today, let's explore the role of belief.

One-part Belief

People tend to be more likely to spread rumors that they believe as compared with those they don't believe. But the interesting thing here is that belief depends in part on your already-held attitudes. People tend to believe rumors that agree with their own point of view.

I've been exploring this idea in a recent set of studies using students who are part of a rival pair of groups (e.g., Republicans and Democratic students). My research team has presented individuals in these groups a series of statements that are either positive or negative about their group or the other group. For example, one Democrat negative rumor is that Democrats are more likely to be alcoholic than the average citizen (By the way, all the statements in this paragraph are fictional—we made them up—and we debrief students carefully to make sure they understand that they are fictional). A Democrat positive rumor is that Democrats give more to charity than the average citizen. We also created Republican positive and Republican negative rumors by systematically changing the targets of these statements.

So far, these studies show that derogatory and praising rumors about the rival group are equally likely to be believed, but when the rumors are about one's own group, people are more likely to believe praising than derogatory rumors. In other words, it seems that we are more willing to disbelieve a derogatory rumor and believe a praising rumor when the target of the rumor is one of our own than when he or she is from the opposing camp.

This makes intuitive sense, and highlights a finding from attitude research: People tend to use their own attitude as a rule of thumb in determining whether or not something is true.

Ideology is one such attitude that—in part—explains the belief in the Obama-is-a-Muslim rumor. A July 15^th Pew Research report found that among all registered voters, 14% of conservatives versus 6% of liberals believe that Obama is a Muslim; ideology appears to plays a role in belief in this rumor. (Interestingly, 17% of conservative Democrats held this belief). I know of no polls measuring belief that Trig-is-Sarah's-grandson, but my prediction is that liberals are more likely to believe it than conservatives.

Hearing rumors again and again also tends to increase our belief in them. In one recent study, participants heard rumors—such as "professors are bribing students" and "coyotes were seen on campus"—from zero to nine times. Then they were asked how strongly they believed these rumors. The more often a tale was heard, the more confident people were that it was true. These results are cause for sober pause—hearing a rumor repeatedly leads to increased belief in it. We seem to use the rule of thumb "if it sounds familiar, it is more likely to be true." What we hear often may in fact seem more plausible simply because we hear it often.

Here is where the active blogosphere compounds these effects. Studies of the World Wide Web show that birds of a feather flock together: Conservative weblogs are overwhelmingly hyperlinked to other conservative weblogs, and liberal weblogs are almost always connected to other liberal weblogs. Only about 10% of weblog connections cross ideological lines.

The Obama rumors are circulating actively in the conservative blogosphere; the Palin rumors race around the liberal Web. Consequently, conservatives hear the Obama rumors often; liberals hear the Palin rumors regularly. Each is predisposed to believe the partisan rumor they are likely to hear in these chambers, and because they hear them again and again, each believes it more and more strongly.

They are each in an echo chamber.

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