Q&A: How to Combat Gossip By Jeremy Caplan FROM Time

"Gossip is unavoidable. Wherever you go, rumors flow. Entire careers, in fact, have been dedicated to creating it, spreading it, quashing it and corralling it. In his new book, The Watercooler Effect, Nicholas DiFonzo, a professor of psychology at the Rochester Institute of Technology, examines the gossip that buzzes through every community, explaining why people feel so compelled to devour and perpetuate rumors, and what effect that has on society at large. DiFonzo spoke with TIME's Jeremy Caplan about some of history's worst rumors, the peculiarities of Web gossip, why "no comment" is the wrong answer and why certain presidential candidates should be more aggressive about battling rumors about them."