Personal Outcomes and Moral Responsibility as Motives for News Transmission: The Impact of Fate Similarity, Fate Uncertainty, and Relationship Closeness

In two experiments we compared contrasting findings on bad news transmission likelihood between literature on rumors and the MUM-effect in order to contribute to the development of a more general theory of news transmission. We argued that several contextual differences account for the contrasting findings between these research conditions. We predicted that fate similarity and fate uncertainty (both present in many rumor contexts and absent in most MUM-contexts) enhance the anticipated personal outcomes of bad news transmission for communicators and hence increase bad news transmission. Supporting our argument, we found that fate uncertainty and fate similarity each increased the likelihood of bad news transmission up to the level of good news transmission. Furthermore, these effects were mediated by communicators’ anticipated personal outcomes of transmission. In addition, Experiment 2 demonstrated anticipated personal outcomes to be only an important motive for news transmission decisions in superficial relationships; for close relationships, experienced moral responsibility appeared to be the paramount motive for transmission.