RUMOR RATED AS CLUE TO MORALE OF NATION

Just as dreams are the psychologist's cue to the structure of an individual personality, so rumor is a cue to the underlying morale of a nation. It reveals the conflicts, latent hostilities, wishes and fears of the people.

Rumors thrive in situations where knowledge is limited and emotions in tense. The result is that, although purporting to be factual, they are for the most part fanciful, being fathered by emotion, not by reason.

30 Rumors Collected

During the month of April, 30 odd rumors were collected in the Boston area. Seventy-five percent were of the so-called "wedge-driving type": that is, rumors expressing hostility against some person or group within our own nation, or against our allies. More concretely, these rumors have expressed resentment toward the President, our allies, the Negroes, the Red Cross, the Jews, etc.

Without doubt the British have born the brunt of the whispering campaign. Almost every frustration which the American have undergone in the last month has been laid at their door. For example, the sugar shortage, tire and gas rationing, and the shortage of tankers for oil transport were all attributed to the British. Every military reverse has similarity been alleged the result of British incompetency or worse. They seem to qualify as the number one scapegoat.

Aggression Displacement Cited

Why should the American people prove such fertile ground for sentiments of this kind? The answer is to be found in the psychological process called "displacement of aggression". Briefly, this process involves frustrations, which tend to arouse hostility. Normally, this hostility is directed against the offending object or persons.

The question now becomes. "What forces are restraining the direct expression of this hostility toward the Axis and diverting it into hostility against the British, against our racial minorities and against our allies?" There are two main explanations: The first force is that during the past twenty years there has been pacifistic philosophy abroad in America which would rule aggression out of human nature, precisely as the Victorians sought to rule out sex.

The second factor lies in the inaccessibility of the enemy. Although we, are able to come to grips with the Japs, the Axis, which we are told is our prime enemy, is out of reach. It is hard to hate when you can't do anything about it, and that has been the predicament of the American people up to the present time.