Thursday, January 20. 1963
Differences In
Legends And Gossip
By Bob Cairns
If a juicy tidbit passed by
several gossips can be
distorted beyond recognition,
why is it that legends, hand
ed down over the ages, stand
the test of time?
“Legends and gossip are
passed along in very different
ways. That’s why there’s such
a contrast of their credibili
ty,” said Dr. James W. Kalat,
an associate professor of
psychology at N. C. State
University.
Kalat has recently com
pleted research which sup
ports his premise concerning
gossip and legend.
' “Gossip is just one person’s
hearsay account of something
passed along to another. A
legend is a structured story
told by a number of tellers,”
Kalat said.
When hearing a legend
from a variety of sources, the
listener naturally picks and
chooses the material, he said.
“He tends to select the
parts of the tale that make the
most sense,” Kalat said.
“Because of this sensible
selection, as the legend is
passed along it beomes more
regular and eventually is a
simple story that can be
passed without further
distortion.”
According to Kalat, gossip
makes the rounds in an entire
ly different way.
“One person hears a story,
passes it along to the next,
who in turn tells it to another
person,” he said. “The story
goes one-to-one-to-one, so
there’s no stabilizing effect
brought on by the other rendi
tions like that found in the
passing of a legend.”
If a change in the story is
made by the second teller,
then that addition can become
a permanent part of the story.
Kalat set up a story chain
which simulated the gossip
and legend passing processes
to test the two methods of tale
telling. More than 150 NCSU
students participated in the
project.
To simulate legends Kalat
chose three written stories of
different levels of-comptexity
|Ofl.lengttu,. a ...
pEach student KsterMSdtO a
story told by three different
people who had just had the
tale told to them,” he said.
For instance, the 11th, 10th,
and ninth persons in the chain
of story tellers passed the tale
to the 12th person.
After listening, the person
tended to repeat a version of
the story which sounded like
a sensible combination of the
three.
“Like legend, as the stray
was repeated it became
simpler and sometimes
shorter,” Kalat said.
The psychologist’s simula
tion of gossip worked quite
differently.
“In this case the 11th person
to listen to a rumor or piece of
gossip would hear the story
told three times, but it was
always told by the 10th person
in the sequence,” he said.
This one storyteller was the
listener’s only source.
Mistakes made by a
previous teller in the chain (18
tellers in all) were deleted on
ly by chance so the story
became distorted quite early,
he said.
“Distorted additions
snowballed, and like gossip
the story became less ac
curate as it was passed
along,” Kalat said. “It took
about five or 10 people before
the story was distorted almost
beyond recognition. Even by
the third telling there were
gross distortions.”
We can be sure that any
rumor or gossip we hear has
an excellent chance of being
untrue, he said. \
The fact that the passing of
legend has a certain built-in
sensibility makes an in
teresting statement about
some of the world’s oldest
stories.
According to Kalat, legends
from Ancient times, including
much Biblical material, was
passed by word of mouth for
centuries before anyone
wrote it down.
“Some people have
assumed that people in an
cient times must have had
better memories than we do
today, but we don’t need that
assumption,” he. said. “As
long as we bear something
from several sources before
repeating it, we can pass on
information with only a
* moderate amount of
distortion.”
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THE CHOWAN HERALD
Page 9-B