Introduction
During WWII, US covert operations were coordinated by the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the CIA. Among its other activities, the organization published manuals on the different types of covert operations. One of these manuals provided guidance to ordinary citizens in occupied territories on how to engage in simple acts of sabotage. Albeit important, acts of sabotage represent only a single item in the long list of covert operations.
Rumors, false leaflets and pamphlets, bribery and blackmail, and forgery are some of the other options available to those who seek to breed confusion, divide the populace, and erode enemy morale. For those intrigued by these tactics and the broader lessons they teach about human behavior, it’s heartening to know that another manual in the series, the euphemistically titled Morale Operations Field Manual (pdf), delves into exactly these topics.
Despite its modest 60-page length, the manual is packed with valuable insights. I can’t do it justice in a single post, so I’ll discuss it across multiple posts.
In this first installment of the series, I’ll focus on rumors.
Rumors
The power of rumors in shaping attitudes
“Rarely can they [rumors] by themselves change basic attitudes. Their function is to confirm suspicions and beliefs already latent; to give sense and direction to fears, resentments, or hopes that have been built up by more materialistic causes; to tip the balance when public opinion is in a precarious state.”
Let's build a simple mental model for how rumors can change the population’s level of dissatisfaction and lead to action. Dissatisfaction, as we're defining it here, is a broad measure of the population's unease and discontent. We assume that, to trigger action (e.g., starting a revolt, engaging in sabotage, or providing intelligence), the population’s dissatisfaction level needs to reach a certain threshold, say, 80 on a scale of 0 to 100.
The dissatisfaction level is a combination of two factors: the initial level of dissatisfaction before any intervention, and the increase caused by the intervention (like the spread of a rumor). For instance, if the pre-existing dissatisfaction level is 75, and our rumor increases this by 10, we hit a dissatisfaction level of 85. This exceeds our threshold of 80, thereby triggering action.
The manual notes that rumors are usually not catalysts for drastic changes in dissatisfaction. They're more like a nudge that tips the scales when public opinion is already teetering on the edge. A rumor might increase dissatisfaction by a small amount—2, 5, perhaps 10—but it's very unlikely to cause a jump of, say, 50.
As rumors have only a relatively small effect, their capacity to incite action depends heavily on the timing. If the population is relatively content—maybe they've had a good day with news from the front and enough food—their dissatisfaction level might be at 60, well below the action threshold. In such circumstances, even the most cunning and well-designed subversive measure won’t incite the population to action. Conversely, on a particularly bad day, with news of war casualties and scarcity of supplies, the dissatisfaction level might already be at 78. A well-timed rumor could easily push this level over the threshold, inciting action.
In sum, a mediocre rumor unleashed on a dissatisfied population may be more effective than a perfect rumor unleashed on a satisfied population.
Individual differences in rumor susceptibility
Characterizing a population's dissatisfaction level and its reaction to rumors using a single statistic is certainly an oversimplification. Societies are diverse by nature, and this diversity extends to how different segments of the population respond to rumors. The OSS Morale Operations Field Manual notes that certain groups are particularly susceptible to rumors.
These groups include the highly religious, the resentful, the illiterate, the anxious, the hateful, and those with a guilty conscience. One group deserves special attention: those “whose monotonous, humdrum lives make them particularly susceptible to fantasy”.
This observation is echoed by Eric Hoffer in his 1951 book about mass movements. “A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business.” Although they look superficially different, spreading rumors and engrossing in the affairs of others share a common feature. Namely, they are two ways of temporarily alleviating the boredom and lack of purpose in these people’s lives.
Properties of a good rumor
A good rumor, among other things, needs to be plausible, suitable for the task, and suggestive.
“Plausibility. A plausible rumor is tied to some known facts, yet incapable of total verification. It may exaggerate, but it stops short of the incredible. It frequently appears as an ‘inside’ story.”
“Suitability to task. To summarize opinions or attitudes which are already widely accepted, slogan-type rumors are best. (‘England will fight to the last Frenchman’). To introduce ‘information’ which will help build up new attitudes, however, narrative-type rumors are best (e.g., rumors which ‘prove’ that Hitler is mentally ill).”
From the perspective of the Allies’ enemies, the “England will fight to the last Frenchman” slogan is quite neat. It’s not only short and memorable, but it also has the potential to stir up the longstanding hostility between the two peoples by implying that the English think of French soldiers as disposable and that the two countries share an unequal burden in the war effort.
“Suggestiveness. The type of rumor which merely hints or suggests something instead of stating it is well adapted to spreading fear and doubt. The listener should always be allowed to formulate his own conclusions.”
Suggestiveness reminds me of the IKEA effect, according to which self-made or partially self-made products are more highly valued than ready-made products. Just like any other phenomenon a white-coated academic decided to call an effect, the IKEA effect is context-dependent. We shouldn’t automatically assume it will apply in a new context. That being said, my hunch is that this phenomenon might partially explain why suggestive rumors are often effective. Unlike its ready-made counterpart, a suggestive rumor is like an unfinished jigsaw: the urge to complete it is hard to resist, and when you complete it, a sense of achievement and satisfaction washes over you.
The art of spreading rumors
Flowers attract bees with their bright colors and sweet nectar. In the process of gathering nectar, bees inadvertently spread pollen from flower to flower, facilitating the fertilization of the flower. Now replace the flower with an undercover agent, the bees with ordinary people, the nectar with an engaging conversation, and the pollen with the rumor: “The rumor should be spoken before an innocent but talkative person (e.g., barber, bartender) who will unconsciously spread the desired rumor.”
One reason that using innocent rumor carriers is a good strategy is that there are so many of them. And every person has friends, the friends have friends, and so on. In other words, the marginal cost of getting your rumor to the second person in the chain is zero; the bartender and the barber will do this job for you. On the downside, without the need to spread rumors, you might need to come up with some new hobbies to justify your regular bar-hopping and sudden interest in weekly haircare.
If a rumor fails to gain traction organically, you can employ a modified version of Cunningham’s law to your advantage. The adage states that “the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.” The name of the adage may be recent, but the wisdom it captures is eternal. The manual, published way before the internet was a thing, observed: “[Rumors] have also been used effectively following military action to cause the enemy to release, through refutation, information of value to our intelligence services.”
Context matters
Imagine an undercover agent we’ll call John, who has been tasked with spreading a rumor in a local village. He has read parts of the Morale Operations Field Manual, and he is convinced he has all the ingredients for a perfect rumor. He casually drops it to the village bartender: “When I was out and about, I overheard enemy officers talk about a ‘little errand’ in the fields. Strangely, some potato plants in a nearby village started to show signs of disease soon after.”
He is confident in his rumor because it’s plausible that the enemy is meddling with the food supply. The comment is short and memorable. It doesn’t say something incredible, like the enemy applying industrial amounts of herbicide. It’s merely an innocent comment, passed on by a pubgoer who is supposedly innocent and even well-meaning. It’s suggestive and implicitly invites the bartender to connect the dots between the “little errand” and the damaged crop.
Despite all this, the bartender doesn’t believe the rumor. Not because he is so resistant to rumors. We are all fallible to the right type of rumor, uttered at the right time. He doesn’t believe it because he has lived in the area his entire life and never encountered a single potato plant—his area is a wheat-growing region. John's rumor is instantly debunked.
John is stumped as to why his carefully crafted rumor flopped. He had studied half the manual, mixed all the ingredients for a juicy rumor, and yet it fell flat. Feeling perplexed and a little humbled, he revisits the manual. He uncovers a passage he had overlooked: “The basis for good rumors is accurate, detailed intelligence. The rumor planner and the rumor operator must keep the closest possible check at all times on the character of the group they are trying to affect, on their traditions, circumstances, sentiments, and interests, and on contemporary happenings and developments. It is essential to have intelligence on what the audience knows and what it does not know, on what it fears and hopes for, on what its morale is at any given time, on what kinds of rumors have ‘caught on’ in the past in the particular area. In many cases, the most effective rumor policy will be to spread further rumors that have arisen spontaneously in enemy territory.”
It finally dawns on him: he had ignored the local context. Generations of rumor planners, policymakers, and countless others have learned the hard way: ignore the local context at your peril.
Determined to not repeat his mistake, John spends time getting to know the villagers and their circumstances. He learns about a previous incident, when firewood was stolen from various households. A rumor had circulated that members of a local minority group were the culprits. It's a contentious issue that still sparks debate among the villagers. His thinking: “If it worked once, it could work again.”
As winter approaches, John returns to the bar with renewed enthusiasm. “Did you hear?” he asks the patrons, “A family in village X had their firewood stolen again. Oddly, the second son of family Y [from the minority group] was spotted there just before the thefts. I’m not implying anything, but it’s a strange coincidence, don't you think?”
Even though taking the local context into account is no guarantee of the rumor’s success, ignoring it is a guarantee of the rumor’s failure.