Will you meet a unicorn or someone that hav never fallen for a rumor? My bet is on the unicorn. On some of the member-run Facebook pages there are entire video series based on auto plant rumors. Why are rumours so believable and spread so easily? Psychology Today gives their take in The 81/2 Laws of Rumor Spread…
Rumors have a way of slipping under our mental defenses before we think to question them. The best ones sidestep common sense entirely. “Think of the lawsuits parents filed over subliminal messages in heavy metal songs,” says Martin Bourgeois, a rumor researcher at Florida Gulf Coast University. “People believed Judas Priest was planting messages to make teenagers commit suicide; no one thought to ask, ‘Why would a rock band want its audience dead?'”
Most of us don’t like to think of ourselves as gullible. But we’re especially likely to accept as true—and do our best to spread—tales that have several specific characteristics that take aim at our best defenses
Btw, I heard it’s an early out today…
(grapic via Adobe Stock)
