From the author: This is an attempt to rationalize a phenomenon among the people called rumors and gossip. Each of us has encountered rumors or gossip. It doesn't matter who the main character was: you or someone else. Most often, gossip does not coincide with reality; there are many absurd conclusions about your behavior or labels. But have you ever thought about why this happens? When I decided to answer this question for myself, I came to several conclusions based on psychological knowledge. Rumors are inevitable When a person hears a story secondhand, consciously or not, but those things that he are not clear, he tries to explain them to himself. For example, if a person hears the phrase “I’ll be there in about 5 minutes,” then the information is perceived literally—in 5 minutes. The human brain cannot retain inaccurate information; it is always rounded off, otherwise it will not be possible to remember. And here misunderstandings may arise like “You said you’ll be there in 5 minutes!!!”, “It’s not true, I said approximately.” There's nothing you can do about it, that's how thinking works. It’s the same with rumors: a person perceives literally, and not figuratively, some of the little things in life. People like to embellish events. To make things more convincing, people like to embellish events, tell colorful stories, exaggerate, and this entails a distortion of the original story. There’s no point in getting angry, because who among us hasn’t done this? Everyone wants to be an eloquent speaker and convey the whole point in rich and bright colors. In addition, there are people who don’t even notice how they become professional storytellers and get too carried away when telling a story. What can we say about pathological liars... They understand things the way they are ready to perceive. It’s no secret that no matter how much you want to convey a thought to a person, he can still understand it in his own way. It seems that the interlocutor says that he understood you, agrees, agrees, and there is a complete feeling that you have been heard, but in reality this is not always the case. And no matter how you manage it, the person doesn’t seem to hear you. And all because a person’s attention is focused on specific words, as if a filter clings to them, and when this happens, he begins to comprehend the information in exactly the same way, to the words that he managed to cling to during the conversation. The reason lies in the structure of thinking, belief system, views about the world, automatic thoughts of this person and much more. They understand the meaning of words differently. We all have our own perception of the world. Everyone sees it from a different angle and each of us has our own map of the world. We all have our own opinion on any issue, and there is not a single identical answer about, for example, what love is. For some, this is the state when wings grow behind the back, for some it is a set of feelings and emotions in the form of intimacy, happiness, mutual trust and respect, and for others it does not exist at all. So in our case, as they say, “you heard a ringing, but you don’t know where it is.” Perhaps the person understood the essence of the words in his own way and interpreted it incorrectly. And by retelling the story from mouth to mouth, it transforms with each person, growing like a snowball. After all, everyone is inclined to do this in their own words, with those unique epithets and figures of speech. Thus, in my opinion, rumors are born. You won’t be able to avoid them, so don’t waste your nerves. take care of yourself :)