Believability and Importance as Determinants of Rumor Among Deaf College Students

In an attempt to develop a "psychology of rumor" among the Deaf, equivalent in scope to what is already known about rumor among hearing populations, one of the main goals of this research was to address the roles of believability and importance in a sample of young adult college students. Believability and importance emerged as significant variables in rumor among Deaf college students. Importance of the rumor topic related to both extent of specific rumor knowledge and to extent of transmission rates of specific rumors. Subjects with more knowledge about a rumor viewed it as more important as did subjects who transmitted a rumor more frequently. Believability also was related to transmission rates. Subjects who transmitted a rumor more frequently also believed it more than did infrequent transmitters. Subjects who knew more about a rumor were also more anxious and more extroverted than their less knowledgeable counterparts. Frequent transmitters were also more anxious than infrequent transmitters. Multivariate analyses indicated that the best predictors of rumor knowledge were generalized anxiety, extroversion and gender. The best predictors of transmission rates were importance and generalized anxiety.