ABSTRACT
In his book Rumor in the Marketplace, social psychologist Frederick Koenig pondered the reasons why the majority of rumors in contemporary society are related to the marketplace. Pipe dream rumors represent the most positive form of rumors in the sense that they reflect public desires and wished-for outcomes. By contrast, bogie rumors reflect feared or anxiety-provoking outcomes. The role of the Internet in the determination of the types of rumors in circulation also must be taken into account. In terms of the marketplace, one interesting development has been the emergence of the something for nothing rumor, a variety of wish-fulfillment hearsay that has appeared with increasing frequency in the in-boxes of Internet users. In organizations, rumors may be intentionally planted to gain an advantage or satisfy some personal motives, as was the case for one chief executive officer of a major company who admitted to having planted rumors with young executives to test whether they were leakproof.
