Scientists for the sake of experiment made citizens believe in the mystical grandmother, running around on all fours

The legend of the mystical grandmother at night the roads were a scientific experiment a group of scientists. For the first time the news that drivers are afraid of the poltergeist in the image of the old woman crawling on all fours, appeared on the Network 2 years ago.

Most recently, she re - "surfaced" on the Internet, on social networks showed up, eyewitnesses, and later decided to go in search of ghosts. This news could not ignore the regional media, it's not every day residents of the city complain of mystical people on the way.

As it turned out, it's not just "duck" bored of the rotor, and a scientific experiment a group of scientists. Bright minds explored the phenomenon of rumors and their impact on people's minds, it was 3 years ago. Scientists and never imagined that it would come to this that the news will pick up journalists and students will want to go looking for the fictional mystic Granny.

In this the correspondent of the site "a Notebook of Volgograd" admitted one of the authors of the project and heads the research group "New look", the psychologist Eugene Kovalenko.

In November 2014 the project team conducted a series of experiments to study the characteristics of the flow of unofficial information (rumors) through the channels of informal communication among various segments of the population, - said the scientist. - We were interested in the moments of adoption by the respondents of different variations of rumors, depending on their individually-typological features and cognitive styles of information, with the same changing external factors. The psychologist explained that the emergence and spread of the hearing required two conditions - the presence of audience interest to a certain problem and frustration for the interest and information needs: - it is Clear that their mutual presence greatly simplifies the emergence of rumors, but what about a situation when one of these conditions is virtually absent. In our case, the condition of "dissatisfaction with interest and information needs" was practically absent, - explained the scientist.

- Therefore, due to the number of techniques - the creation of increased dramatisation and mystification of the event - we tried to compensate for the lack of a condition. Apparently, the compensation was successful, as in the elderly poltergeist believed the whole Volgograd and even region. But before the scientists throw stones, it should be noted that the research was not only scientific, but and practical. It was aimed at drawing attention to the real problem of injuries on the roads in the dark.

- By the way, the original Ghost was a girl in a light robe, - admitted Evgenie Kovalenko, but happened renaming of the character, which is quite usual for this type of rumors. Also saw "smoothing" of the detention hearing, the initial plot when transferring the story became much shorter. According to the scientist, the science team did not expect that in search of the grandmother wants to go to real people, and journalists will tell about the poltergeist in their publications.

The hearing was run for a specific audience, but the fact that he was "out of it", was a bit unexpected. Scientists have already managed to forget about his legend, but some of the citizens decided to refresh her memory of his countrymen, and June 28, 2017 on the old re-circled the Volgograd social network. This of grandmother the last time it was rumored in 2016. Whether it was still an experiment, whether the legend has long been to live my life, the scientists admitted. Importantly, now the real grandmother showed up...

Translated by «Yandex.Translator»