Not Born Yesterday

by Hugo Mercier

  Psychologists Nicholas DiFonzo and Prashant Bordia con-

  ducted a series of studies of workplace rumors, collecting nearly

  three hundred from diff er ent businesses— rumors about who

  was promoted, made redundant, leaving the com pany, and the

  like.14 Although accuracy varied from business to business, it was

  very high: generally above 80 percent and often 100 percent. For

  example, these researchers noted, “rumors about who would be

  laid- off at a large com pany undergoing a radical downsizing were

  totally accurate 1 week in advance of formal announcements.”15

  These results replicate several older studies of the grapevine in

  work environments, which all had observed rumor accuracies

  above 80 percent.16

  One of these studies looked at a particularly in ter est ing en-

  vironment: the military during World War II.17 By contrast with

  the classic study by Allport and Postman, which mostly looked

  at war time rumors among U.S. civilians, psychologist Theodore

  Caplow focused on rumors circulating in the U.S. Army— who

  was going to be deployed where and when, who would be repa-

  triated, and so forth.18 These rumors were uncannily correct.

  According to Caplow: “ Every major operation, change of station,

  and impor tant administrative change was accurately reported by

  rumor before any official announcement had been made.”19

  Some of the accurate rumors reviewed here might have made

  people less anxious: soldiers hearing they would soon be repa-

  triated, employees discovering they would get promoted. Un-

  doubtedly, others generated significant stress: hearing one

  would be sent to the front or made redundant. Whether a rumor

  150 ch ap t er 10

  increases or reduces anxiety has little to do with its accuracy.

  What is special, then, about the contexts that consistently gen-

  erate accurate rumors?

  Spontaneous Rumor Tracking

  At heart, the answer is quite simple: rumors tend to be accurate

  when their content has significant consequences for the people

  among whom they circulate.

  Like any other cognitive activity, open vigilance is costly, and

  we only exercise it to the extent that it is deemed worthwhile.20

  This means that in domains that matter to us, we carefully keep

  track of who said what, and whether what they said turned out

  to be correct or not. In turn, this motivates speakers to exercise

  great caution when reporting rumors, so as not to jeopardize

  their own credibility.21 When we find out, eventually, whether

  the rumors were true or not, our ability to track who said what

  helps us create networks of reliable in for mants.

  This is what enabled the U.S. soldiers studied by Caplow to

  be so efficient at transmitting accurate, and only accurate, ru-

  mors.22 Given the content of the rumors— such as when and

  where one would be deployed—it soon became clear whether

  they had been true or not. Thanks to repeated feedback, the sol-

  diers learned who they could trust for what type of information,

  and who should be taken out of the information network.

  Moreover, for issues that relate to their immediate environ-

  ment, people are generally able to check the content of rumors,

  either against their existing knowledge or by gathering new in-

  formation. This nips false rumors in the bud, irrespective of how

  anxiogenic the situation might be.

  Psychologist James Diggory studied the rumors that surrounded

  an outbreak of rabies in 1952 in eastern Pennsylvania.23 People in

  t i t il l at in g r um o r s 151

  the most affected counties would have been the most anxious.

  However, they were also less likely, compared with those in more

  distant counties, to believe in exaggerated rumors about the threat.

  The proximity of the threat made them more anxious but also put

  them in a better position to evaluate the risks accurately.

  One of the most poisonous rumors circulating in the United

  States during World War II accused individuals of Japa nese

  ancestry of treason, in par tic u lar of having engaged in acts of

  sabotage by assisting the attack on Pearl Harbor. While these

  rumors ran wild in the mainland, in Hawaii, where the sus-

  pected individuals lived, they were roundly rejected “for the

  people could see for themselves and could talk to the vari ous

  defenders of the islands.”24

  Sometimes, new prob lems arise that are practically relevant,

  but about which we don’t know much, and reliable networks of

  in for mants haven’t had time to crystallize. This is likely what hap-

  pened during the strike at the University of Michigan. In this

  novel situation, few employees had reliable information about

  impor tant matters— whether classes would be canceled, whether

  penalties would be imposed for striking, and so forth. The lack

  of reliable prior knowledge or established networks created a rich

  breeding ground for false rumors. However, because the issues

  were practically impor tant for the employees, they made use of

  the crisis call center created by the researchers. As a result, “in

  most cases, false rumors were quelled before they could be

  widely disseminated.”25

  How Do We Believe in False Rumors?

  Clearly, our mechanisms of open vigilance can do a very good

  job when we’re assessing the majority of rumors, especially those

  that affect us most. Why, then, do they seem to fail so abysmally

  152 ch ap t er 10

  in other cases? I argue that the diffusion of false rumors isn’t as

  much of an indictment of our open vigilance mechanisms as it

  seems—in fact, quite the contrary.

  What is shocking when it comes to false rumors is that people

  accept them on the basis of such flimsy evidence. But how do

  people really believe in these rumors? Believing something— a

  rumor or anything else—is not an all- or- nothing matter. Believ-

  ing depends on what you do with a given piece of information.

  A belief can remain essentially inert, insulated from cognitive or

  behavioral consequences, if we don’t work out what inferences

  or actions follow from it. Dan Sperber has called such beliefs re-

  flective, by contrast with intuitive beliefs, from which we freely

  draw inferences, and which we spontaneously use in grounding

  our actions.26 For example, you intuitively believe there’s a book

  (or other device) in front of you when you’re reading these lines.

  You can grasp the book, you know you can use it to cover your

  face from the sun, that you can lend it to a friend, and so on. By

  contrast, take the belief that most stars you can see at night are

  larger than the sun. You should be genuinely persuaded it is true,

  and yet there isn’t much you can do with it.

  For reflective beliefs— beliefs that tend to have fewer personal

  consequences—we shouldn’t expect open vigilance mechanisms

  to make as much of an effort: Why bother, if the belief doesn’t

  make much of a difference? I argue that most false rumors are

  held only reflective
ly, for they would have much more serious

  consequences if they were held intuitively.

  In some cases, it is difficult to imagine what significant be hav-

  iors could follow from a rumor. Chinese citizens are hardly

  going to challenge the way insurance settlements are handled in

  the United States. A Pakistani shop keeper might say the Israelis

  orchestrated 9/11, but what is he going to do about it?

  t i t il l at in g r um o r s 153

  Even when people could do something on the basis of a (false)

  rumor, they most often don’t. American truthers— who believe

  9/11 was an inside job— don’t act as if they intuitively believed

  in the conspiracy. As journalist Jonathan Kay noted: “One of the

  great ironies of the Truth movement is that its activists typically

  hold their meetings in large, unsecured locations such as college

  auditoriums— even as they insist that government agents will

  stop at nothing to protect their conspiracy for world domination

  from discovery.”27

  Or take the rumeur d’Orléans, which accused Jewish shop keep-

  ers of kidnapping young women. Many of the town’s inhabit-

  ants spread the rumor, although for the vast majority of them,

  the rumor had little or no behavioral consequences. Some young

  girls started visiting other retailers, or asked friends to accom-

  pany them while shopping in the suspect stores. At the height

  of the rumor, some people in the busy streets stopped and stared

  at the shops. Glaring is hardly an appropriate way to react after

  accusations of submitting young women to a lifetime of sexual

  exploitation. These be hav iors (or lack thereof) show that most

  of those who spread the rumor didn’t intuitively believe in them.

  By contrast, the rumors circulating in the wake of Pearl Har-

  bor against Americans of Japa nese ancestry seem to have had

  significant effects, as the U.S. government de cided to detain most

  of these citizens in internment camps. In real ity, there were more

  impor tant drivers behind the internment camps than the nasty

  rumors about treason. Many of these Japa nese Americans had

  been successful farmers in California, with more productive plots

  than their white neighbors. Their success led to a “resentment

  from white West Coast farmers,” which “provided part of the im-

  petus for mass incarceration of [Americans of] Japa nese

  descent.”28

  154 ch ap t er 10

  The lack of action following ac cep tance of the false rumors

  described here suggests that open vigilance mechanisms

  barely gave these rumors passing grades. If our open vigilance

  mechanisms had really deemed the rumors plausible, we

  should have expected altogether more power ful reactions, the

  kinds of reactions we witness when people intuitively believe

  in rumors.

  In Pakistan, conspiracy theories about the dreaded ISI— the

  intelligence service— are very common. Yet Pakistanis don’t

  or ga nize conferences on how evil and power ful the ISI is. Pre-

  cisely because they intuitively believe the ISI is evil and power-

  ful, they don’t say so publicly.

  Imagine that a female friend runs out of a shop in tears,

  crying that she has been the victim of a kidnapping attempt.

  Wil you be content with glaring at the vendor and, later, tel ing

  other people to avoid the shop? Aren’t you instead going to

  call the police immediately?

  The fact that most people don’t take false rumors or conspir-

  acy theories to their logical conclusion is also driven home by

  the few individuals who do. Edgar Maddison Welch was one of

  them. He believed the rumors saying that the basement of the

  Comet Ping Pong restaurant was used by Hil ary Clinton cronies

  to engage in child sex trafficking. Given this belief, coupled with

  his mistrust of the corrupt police, Welch’s storming of the res-

  taurant, guns ablaze, requesting the owners to free the children,

  kind of made sense. Most people who endorsed the rumor—

  and, according to some pol s, mil ions did— were happy doing

  nothing about it or, at worst, sending insulting messages online.29

  One can hardly imagine a child sex trafficker coming to see the

  error of his ways as a result of reading Nation Pride’s comment-

  ing on the trafficker’s “absolutely disgusting” be hav ior and giv-

  ing his restaurant only one star (Google review might want to

  t i t il l at in g r um o r s 155

  offer the option of giving no stars for pedophile- friendly

  pizzerias).30

  Why did Welch take the pizzagate rumors so seriously? I hon-

  estly don’t know. What matters for my argument is that of the

  mil ions of people who believed the rumor, he was the only one

  to act as if he did so intuitively.

  Unfettered Curiosity

  Even if false rumors do not, as a rule, have any serious behavioral

  consequences, many people endorse them. Isn’t that a failure of

  open vigilance, even if a more modest one? To understand why

  this might not be a significant failure, and why people say they

  believe false rumors, we must start by asking why people are in-

  terested in such rumors at all. After all, if they don’t do much

  with the information, why are people so keen on hearing and

  spreading rumors?

  Cognition is costly— a small cost for each bit of information

  pro cessing, and a substantial cost for growing the brain that en-

  ables it all. As a result, our minds are particularly attuned to

  useful information. We come equipped with a mechanism to

  recognize human faces, but not human necks.31 We are naturally

  attentive to many features of potential romantic partners, but not

  of programming languages. We are more interested in informa-

  tion about individual humans than individual rocks.

  Ideally, we should only pay attention to, pro cess, and store in-

  formation that is of practical importance, information that al-

  lows us to better navigate the world. However, it is impossible

  to anticipate exactly which piece of information will come in

  handy— indeed, attempting to make such guesses is also a cog-

  nitively costly task. Your friend Aisha bores you with trivial de-

  tails about her new colleague, Salma. But if you later meet Salma

  156 ch ap t er 10

  and get a crush on her, this information might come in handy.

  Pro cessing and memorizing information is costly, but ignoring

  information can be costlier, so it makes sense to err on the side

  of caution, especially if the information fits a template of infor-

  mation that is particularly costly to ignore.

  Take face recognition. Our ability to recognize faces evolved

  because it helped us interact with other people. The focus, or

  proper domain—to use Dan Sperber’s terminology—of face-

  recognition is composed of the faces of actual humans with whom

  we interact.32 But a great many objects are picked up by our face

  recognition mechanism, even though they aren’t in this mecha-

  nism’s proper domain: nonhuman animal faces, a mountain on

&n
bsp; Mars, electric sockets, and so forth (figure 3; Google “pareido-

  lia” for many more examples).33 This constitutes the actual do-

  main of the face-recognition mechanism: all the things it can take

  as input.

  Why is the actual domain of our face-recognition mechanism

  so much broader than its proper domain? Because of a cost asym-

  metry. If you see a face in an electric socket, your friend might

  find that funny; if you mistake your friend’s face for an electric

  socket (or anything else, really), she will be significantly less

  amused.

  Mismatches between the proper and the actual domain of cog-

  nitive mechanisms create vast domains of relevance: informa-

  tion we find relevant irrespective of whether it has any practical

  consequence. This is the source of our boundless curiosity.

  Like repre sen ta tions of faces, most cultural products are suc-

  cessful because we find them relevant. Celebrity gossip is an

  example. If information about other people tends to be valuable,

  information about popu lar, beautiful, strong, smart, dominant

  individuals is even more valuable. During our evolution, we

  would barely have heard of such individuals without actually

  t i t il l at in g r um o r s 157

  Figure 3. Two examples of pareidolia: seeing faces where there are none.

  Source: NASA and grendelkhan.

  interacting with them: most of the relevant information was

  also practically relevant. Nowadays, we may never interact with

  these salient individuals, yet we still find information about

  them alluring. If you aren’t into the latest gossip about Prince

  Harry and Meghan Markle, you might be interested in biogra-

  phies of Lincoln or Einstein, even though you’re even less likely

  to meet them than are people who read Star to meet Harry and

  Meghan. Because of our interest in information about salient

  individuals, we reward individuals who provide such informa-

  tion, by thinking a friend who knows the latest celebrity stories

  more entertaining or by buying an author’s books.

  Many successful false rumors are about threats. It might seem

  curious that we like thinking about threats, but it makes sense.

  We may not like threats, but if there are threats, we want to know

  about them. Even more than faces, information about threats

  pre sents a clear cost asymmetry: ignoring information about

  potential threats can be vastly costlier than paying too much