-Caveat Lector-
Legends of the Fall: Sept. 11 Myths Abound
Tales Embellished as They Speed Across the Web
By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 4, 2002; Page A03
The way most people heard it, a "friend of a friend" received
a letter on Sept. 10 from a former boyfriend, an
Afghan, begging her not to fly on commercial airplanes on Sept. 11.
The story was passed around in early October
because the boyfriend had also warned her not to visit malls on Halloween.
In a separate, widely circulated e-mail, Dunkin' Donuts employees
of Arab descent were described as cheering
when they heard that the World Trade Center buildings had collapsed.
And then there were the antiwar protesters from Idaho University
who were reportedly chased from a Best
Western restaurant by citizens singing "God Bless America."
All the stories were urgent and riveting -- and untrue. In the
weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, there has been a
surge in urban legends -- tales that travel at warp speed through
the Internet and across neighborhood fences --
gathering embellishments as they go.
"After September 11, there was an immediate and sharp upswing in
the world of rumor, gossip, half-heard tales
and imaginings," said Barbara Mikkelson, a founder of www.snopes.com -
- one of the best-known Web sites that
track urban legends.
The horror and drama of the terrorist attacks are exactly
what urban legends thrive on.
In new research published in the December issue of the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, scientists
found that legends that provoke anger, fear or disgust are
those that are most likely to be read, remembered and
passed on. Like a natural environment where species compete
against each other, urban legends that evoke the
strongest emotions appear to have the best survival rates.
"There are situations where truth does not win out," said
Chip Heath, a professor of organization behavior at
Stanford University who published the paper with colleagues
at Duke University. "Legends that punch more
emotional buttons are more widely spread."
"What we've been able to show is as long as something has
emotion it doesn't need content," said Heath. "It will
survive."
Heath evaluated multiple versions of disgust-laden myths
about rats in soda bottles and people eating cat food
mislabeled as tuna. In every instance, the researchers found
that the most disgusting version became dominant.
Besides that powerful emotional message, legends that last
have an internal logic that makes them potentially
believable. Unlike lies and innuendo, urban legends gain
credibility because the people who pass them along
believe they are true. In the case of the anonymous woman
with the Afghan boyfriend, the claim that the
boyfriend had "predicted" the Sept. 11 attacks gave his
warnings about Halloween credibility.
"It's rare that people know a story is false and spread
it anyway," said Gary Fine, a professor of sociology at
Northwestern University who studies such legends. "More
often, they think it's true or aren't sure. . . . People say
this could happen and it's plausible and I am therefore
justified in talking about it. The story is just too good to be
false."
Most successful urban legends also evolve so that people
get the feeling they are close to the source of the
secret information. They have a tone of whispered urgency
and say the event happened to "a friend of a friend"
-- near enough for people to feel that they can trust the
source, but distant enough that actual verification is
impossible.
But Heath and other researchers said the real reason people
pass legends along has little to do with their factual
content or credibility: Legends confirm beliefs that people
already have. Since people are likely to pass on tales to
other people who feel the same way, groups of people can
reaffirm shared beliefs through such tales.
"Myths are part of the way we deal with unease," said Mikkelson.
"We reach out to other people to find that the
feelings we are experiencing are not out of line. One of the
ways we do that is through our wild stories. We are
saying, 'We are concerned about it, and are you feeling the
same concern I am?' "
Fine, who recently coauthored the book "Whispers on the
Color Line: Rumor and Race in America," said urban
legends flourish during times of conflict, when they drive
wedges between people and allow communities to feel
justified about their angers and fears.
Heath's new report cites mirror legends that surfaced
simultaneously in the black and white communities during
the 1943 race riots in Detroit: "One asserted that a black
baby had been thrown from the bridge by white sailors;
another that a white baby had been thrown from the bridge by blacks."
Another group of legends are wish-fulfillment stories, like
the much-repeated account of a fireman who "surfed"
the collapsing World Trade Center buildings and walked away.
Another reported that a dog named Daisy had
rescued countless souls from the damaged buildings.
A third category involves legends that convey fear and confirm
people's feelings that they are vulnerable and at
risk. After Sept. 11, these included rumors that said 30 Ryder
and U-Haul trucks had been stolen and that
suggested terrorists would use them to attack Americans.
One of the most effective ways to find out that a legend is
false is to see that there are multiple versions floating
around, each with the same message but with a different cast
of characters. Web sites such as www.snopes.com
and www.urbanlegends.com track such reports and can help
people dismiss tales instead of passing them on.
While the stories can seem laughably false in retrospect,
they carry great power to harm, especially during times
of confusion. The story about Arab American employees at
Dunkin' Donuts could make people more inclined to be
prejudiced against Arab Americans. Another report, which
said Coca-Cola's logo was designed so that a mirror
image would produce an anti-Islamic message, caused the
company's sales in Egypt to plummet 10 to 15 percent,
according to Mikkelson.
A widely circulated myth that raged through much of the
Islamic world about Israeli agents being behind the Sept.
11 attacks may have increased tensions in the Middle East.
"These rumors tend to foster an environment of fear, where
everything becomes a shadow that needs to be
jumped at, everything is perceived as a threat," said Mikkelson.
"It influences how you view the people around you
and how you interact with them."
© 2002 The Washington Post Company
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