Tiger and the Rules of Rumor

Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife

Not too long ago, we looked at the Tiger Woods Effect: where players competing against Tiger Woods were apparently too discouraged or intimidated to play their best, knocking points off their games. Today, let’s talk about a second concept we might now have to start referring to as the new Tiger Woods Effect, replacing the old Tiger Woods Effect: when stonewalling the press and the police makes an embarrassing incident much worse and much bigger than it needs to be.

That’s, of course, what’s going on after the Tiger Woods accident, which has now led to affair rumors and an explosion of searches for pictures of his supposed mistress, Rachel Uchitel.

So, what are the mistakes that Tiger is making? And how do they violate the rules of rumor?:

1) Not talking to the police or to the press

This is the obvious one, right? So far, he’s made no meaningful statement on the incident. At least, no statement that holds any information that might explain what happened.

Breakin’ the rulez: Uncertainty Is the Lifeblood of Rumor. There’s no more basic fact of rumors than that they’re a reaction to uncertainty — that they are, in fact, a collective problem-solving mechanism to deal with uncertainty. Humans don’t like uncertainty, thus they’ll go a long way to dispel it, even if that means making anything and everything up. Where do we tend to see rumors in the wild? We see them when a new disease has popped up. We see them when a country might face invasion. We see them when a corporation might be having layoffs. People are uncertain, they’re anxious, and so they look for clues to what’s coming next. Now, what is or is not going on in Tiger Woods’s life might not be worth a lot of anxiety to the average person, but it’s certainly fun to talk about, and he’s left nothing but rumor to fill the breach of uncertainty.

2) Presuming that a celebrity can have any reasonable expectation of privacy

Here’s the end of Tiger Woods’s somewhat testy statement about the accident, posted Sunday on his Web site: “I appreciate all the concern and well wishes that we have received. But, I would also ask for some understanding that my family and I deserve some privacy no matter how intrusive some people can be.” While Tiger may want privacy, he’s a savvy guy who’s been famous for a while now. It may not be super-fun, but the cost of celebrity is a lack of privacy. When you’re a billion-dollar, one-man brand, there are things you give up.

Breakin’ the rulez: No, Celebrities Do Not Have Privacy. The fact is, we’re hairless monkeys who like to talk about other hairless monkeys. As mentioned above, what happens in the life of Tiger Woods is really of no importance to most of us, rationally. But celebrities get to be celebrities because of how we’re built mentally, and they suffer the price of fame because of how we’re built mentally. A study a little while back found that monkeys were willing to give up delicious fruit juice (a reward they really love, used in many primate experiments) to look at pictures of higher-status monkeys — monkey celebrities of a sort. Think of people in the supermarket handing over a couple dollars for People. Same thing. Tiger Woods gets to make lots of money and marry a Swedish model because people like celebrities; he has to answer questions about whether his Swedish-model wife punched him in the face for the same reason. Sorry, dude.

3) Giving a terrible opening cover story

The first (chronologically) and most glaring (overall) error Tiger and his wife made was immediately putting out a cover story that simply sounded implausible on its face: that Tiger had crashed his car in front of the house and that his wife had been forced to break the rear window with a golf club to get to him. Not only did this story sound bizarre and implausible, it left more questions than answers. It immediately opened up speculation: Was he on drugs? Was he zonked on pain killers from his recent surgery? Why was his wife really smashing his car window with a golf club?

Breakin’ the rulez: Misuse of Tell-Your-Own-Story Rule. A basic rule of fighting rumors is not to dispute someone else’s facts, but to put forward your own. People use “perceived familiarity” with a supposed “fact” as a mental shortcut to judge its truth. Thus, if they hear “X isn’t true,” over time they simply remember “X.” So, for instance, if you’re the Democrats during the health care debate, you don’t want to get stuck repeating, “There are no death panels.” What people remember from that is, “Man, there’s sure a lot of controversy over these ‘death panels’ I hear so much about.” So, you want to put forward your own story, and quickly. But not when it’s as stupid as the one above. When it’s that stupid, you can’t repeat it very often — and thus it will be swamped by someone else’s more plausible story, which can be repeated more times.

4) Repeating the rumor

If Tiger and his wife had put out a more plausible initial story, maybe they wouldn’t have to face the affair-fight rumor. But now that they’re up against it, they’re right at the edge of making the biggest and most common mistake of rumor-fighting. Here’s the middle of the Tiger Woods statement:

Although I understand there is curiosity, the many false, unfounded and malicious rumors that are currently circulating about my family and me are irresponsible.

The only person responsible for the accident is me. My wife, Elin, acted courageously when she saw I was hurt and in trouble. She was the first person to help me. Any other assertion is absolutely false.

While this avoids directly restating the rumors that his wife hit him because of an affair, it’s a step down that road.

Breakin’ the rulez: Don’t Repeat the Rumor. As explained above, denying a piece of information just tends to reinforce the bad information. You have to replace a rumor with your own story. It just — as also mentioned above — can’t be so ludicrous as to draw more attention back to the more-plausible rumor.

5) Not just quickly coming clean

For this one, let’s assume the main rumor here is true.

Breakin’ the rulez: When You’re Caught, Apologize Quickly and Move On. If the rumors are true, nothing short of the most amazing new cover story in the world can avoid some measure of embarrassment. It doesn’t take a scientist to tell you that the quickest way to end the pain is to pull off the band-aid and move forward. Admit what happened (ending the uncertainty), then ask for privacy (which you mostly won’t get), and move on. You’re rich, you’re famous, people still want to watch you golf.

As for dealing with your wife… maybe there you’re S.O.L.