The Unshakeable Power of Rumor

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Have you heard the latest? How could someone do that?

Even with the limited information of rumors, we make guesses and draw conclusions. But can we correct mistaken beliefs when we receive more accurate information? Can we eliminate the impact of rumors?

When something important and newsworthy happens, we rarely get the whole story at first. This is true of national and local news—but it’s also true in our personal lives. We hear some correct and some incorrect details. More information slowly comes to light. People spread rumors and innuendos. They make suggestions, and we can't help but follow those suggestions to their implied conclusions. But some of our original conclusions will be wrong. Eventually, we’ll hear more details and some may contradict our mistaken assumptions and conclusions.

But do we then correct our beliefs?

We might not. Mistaken beliefs may continue to guide our thoughts and beliefs. The continued influence effect is the finding that people will stick with discredited information—even when they can accurately recall the facts that mean the original information was wrong.

This just seems wrong in so many ways.

Some of the early research exploring the continued influence effect came from Johnson and Seifert (1994). They gave people a series of news stories about the theft of some jewelry from a couple’s home while the couple was on vacation. Early in the news reports, participants read that the police suspected the couple’s son. They also received some consistent circumstantial evidence—he was asked to watch the house, he had a key, and he had a lot of gambling debts. In later reports, participants learned some exculpatory evidence—the son was out of town and the thief may have entered the house through a broken basement window. This indicates that the son probably didn’t commit the crime. Nonetheless, many people continued to suspect the son. Even when they remembered the exculpatory evidence that the son didn’t commit the theft, participants continued to suspect him. The continued influence effect is the finding that incorrect information continues to bias the way we understand a situation.

If you skip the direct statement of suspicion, and only give the circumstantial evidence, is the continued influence effect even stronger. In the research by Johnson and Seifert, they directly told participants that the son was a suspect. But in a recent study by Patrick Rich and Maria Zaragoza (2015), participants were merely given the circumstantial evidence and allowed to draw their own conclusions. The researchers didn’t state that the son was a suspect. Instead they only provided the circumstantial evidence that implicated the son—he was asked to watch the house, he had a key, and he had gambling debts. Of course people then drew their own conclusions—maybe the son stole the family jewels. When people had been led to draw their own conclusions, the continued influence effect was much stronger: Researchers could tell participants that not only was the son out of town but also that someone else had been arrested after selling expensive jewelry at a pawn shop. Participants remembered this more recent information. But they continued to suspect the son. Letting people come to their own conclusion makes it particularly hard to change their beliefs.

Rich and Zaragoza noted that this isn’t a memory problem: People don’t forget the disconfirming evidence; they remember it. But when people make judgments, they often don’t engage in effortful processing and serious analysis. When someone asked them about the son, they quickly recalled the circumstantial evidence implicating him, and that they had suspected him. Evaluating all the evidence, including the disconfirming evidence, takes substantially more cognitive effort. Let’s face it: People are generally cognitively efficient; you could even say lazy. In other words, we go with the straightforward and simple explanations—often because the simple explanation is the one we learned first and which comes to mind easily. When we have drawn a conclusion ourselves based on the implications, we are more likely to continue sticking with that conclusion.

This is the power of rumor and innuendo. You can lead people to certain conclusions through suggestions and partial information. Once they have followed the implications to the obvious conclusion, that conclusion will stick. Discrediting the incorrect rumors and providing more complete information isn’t enough to get people to change their beliefs. I’m sure you can recall similar instances in the real world—times when rumors and innuendo have ruined someone’s reputation; times when incomplete information about a political candidate led people to the wrong conclusions. If you can come up with your own examples and conclusions, my argument will be even more effective.

Johnson & Seifert (1994) Sources of the continued influence effect: When misinformation in memory affects later inferences. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 20, 1420-1436

Rich, P. R., & Zaragoza, M. S. (2015, July 6). The Continued Influence of Implied and Explicitly Stated Misinformation in News Reports. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. Advance online publication.