The impact of rumors on the judgmental forecasting process

The study investigates the impact of rumors when forecasting changing time series. In this study, the subjects were presented with three types of rumors about the future direction of the time series-correct rumors, incorrect rumors and rumors which provide no information. Results indicate that correct rumors improved the quality of the forecasts; incorrect rumors and rumors with no information content evoked the same quality of the forecasts. The latter relationships persisted and affected forecasting quality in subsequent time series