Comparing Pezzo And Beckstead

Rumors are spread every day in high school whether people realize it or not. In this rumor mill, rumors are transmitted from one person to another for reasons such as revenge or to start a conversation. The world today is not much different. Mark V. Pezzo and Jason W. Beckstead decide to explore rumor transmission and come up with astounding results which are noted in their scientific report. Throughout this scientific report, Pezzo and Beckstead seek to analyze what variables make individuals want to transmit rumors. These studies took place at Wake Forest University and University of Virginia. During the first study a student died of meningitis and in the second study, ten people dead from shootings in Washington D.C. Included in a well

According to the report done by Pezzo and Beckstead, they very nearly followed the guidelines for a scientific report.

In the experiment conducted by Pezzo and Beckstead, the purpose was to construct a multilevel analysis to explore the two variables, anxiety and belief, and their effect on the transmission of rumors. They used psychology students from two different universities that were recently affected by a tragic event. Each psychology student received questions that dealt with do with the amount of rumors they heard and the number of rumors they spread. Pezzo and Beckstead then analyzed the data, mainly focused on the within-subject factor, the researchers found that there was an effect when analyzing belief but no effect when it came to rumor anxiety (91). According to Rosnow, rumors are defined as “unconfirmed statements or reports, presented for possible belief” (91). In this report, Pezzo and Beckstead think that there is a relationship between the anxiety

The second study is located at the University of Virginia where random shootings had taken place nearby in Washington, D.C. Both of these situations mirror real-life and seem to happen more often than the majority of people think. Although Pezzo and Beckstead don’t seem to mention or incorporate this in their report, situations such as these would be expected to have different effects on students therefore having different levels of anxiety. A student who died in result of bacterial meningitis is scary but does not bring the same level of anxiety as someone randomly shooting and killing ten people within 90 miles of the school. Since Pezzo and Beckstead had proved that anxiety does not play a large role in the transmission of rumors, this should not have affected their analysis. Nonetheless, that does not mean that proximity isn’t something that should be considered when asking who has been affected by a tragic event seeing that students much closer to the event could have a higher level of anxiety than those who are further away. The type of students who participated in this experiment is also something to be cognizant of when looking at this report. Psychology students were chosen in both studies. By only having one certain type of students participating in this survey or be a part of this experiment does not convey an accurate representation of people for the test.