S. Anthony et S. Gibbins, BELIEVABILITY AND IMPORTANCE AS DETERMINANTS OF RUMOR AMONG DEAF COLLEGE-STUDENTS, American annals of the deaf, 140(3), 1995, pp. 271-278
In an attempt to develop a ''psychology of rumor'' among the Deaf, equ
ivalent in scope to what is already known about rumor among hearing po
pulations, one of the main goals of this research was to address the r
oles of believability and importance in a sample of young adult colleg
e students. Believability and importance emerged as significant variab
les in rumor among Deaf college students. Importance of the rumor topi
c related to both extent of specific rumor knowledge and to extent of
transmission rates of specific rumors. Subjects with more knowledge ab
out a rumor viewed it as more important as did subjects who transmitte
d a rumor more frequently. Believability also was related to transmiss
ion rates. Subjects who transmitted a rumor more frequently also belie
ved it more than did infrequent transmitters. Subjects who knew more a
bout a rumor were also more anxious and more extroverted than their le
ss knowledgeable counterparts. Frequent transmitters were also more an
xious than infrequent transmitters. Multivariate analyses indicated th
at the best predictors of rumor knowledge were generalized anxiety, ex
troversion and gender. The best predictors of transmission rates were
importance and generalized anxiety.