A multi-level analysis of rumor transmission: Effects of anxiety and belief in two field experiments

Researchers have generally reported a positive linear relation between rumor anxiety and trans-mission but less consistent effects of situational anxiety and belief in the rumor. These conclu-sions, however, are based on relatively few studies that have only analyzed between-subject variance in rumor transmission and often in situations producing only moderate anxiety. We ex-amined rumors stemming from 2 real-world settings: (a) the sudden death of a college student from meningitis and (b) the Washington, DC “sniper ” shootings. We analyzed data using multi-level modeling and focused primarily on within-subjects variance. In both studies, we found strong overall effects of belief and typically no overall effect of rumor anxiety. More important, in both studies, a significant Belief × Anxiety interaction occurred. In contrast to past theoriz-ing, the effects of belief were strongest for high-anxiety rumors. Also interesting was a signifi-cant curvilinear effect of anxiety at lower levels of belief in Study 1 and a significant main effect of situational anxiety in Study 2. We discuss the important contribution that multilevel model-ing can make to the growing literature on rumor transmission. The study of rumor transmission has a long history in social psychology. Rumors have been shown to affect a variety o