Social psychology has been criticized for emphasizing the individual in the study of social behavior. That is, theory, methods and results are often approached from an intrapsychic, rather than an interpersonal level of analysis. The emphasis on the individual, originating in Floyd Allport’s vision of social psychology in the 1920s, became even more pronounced in the postwar American social psychology. [1] Even areas of study that originally incorporated social influences became more individualized. For example, group-level influences in attitude change were overtaken by individual cognition-focused approaches. [2] Such examples abound and social psychology’s focus on individual-level variables and the neglect of sociocultural determinants of social behavior have been widely documented and critiqued. In this paper, we discuss the spread of rumor. By rumor we mean “a specific proposition for belief, passed along from person to person, usually by word of mouth, without secure standards of evidence being present.” This definition, although dated (rumors today flourish on the Internet, for instance), captures the essential element of “being unproven,” which is associated with rumors. Rumors, like news, inform people about items of importance to the collective, but differ from news along the dimension of authenticity. [3] The characteristic of authenticity is, of course, often context dependent. Rumors also differ from other forms of hearsay, such as gossip, in that the latter are usually about people and serve the functions of entertainment and establishing social mores. Rumors, however, could be about people, things or events, and have an element of urgency about them. Prasad collected and classified 30 rumors, which consisted mainly of exaggerated reports of destruction in the wake of an earthquake. [4] He argued that conditions of intense anxiety and uncertainty lead to an attitude which directed peoples’ attention to the situation. Specifically, this attitude had four dimensions, which he labeled as emotional, cognitive, cultural and social. The underlined phrase “the latter” in paragraph 2 refers to ………………… .