You've probably heard the one about heavy metal singer Ozzy Osbourne decapitating rats (or was it puppies?) during concerts in the 1980s.
Urban legends are fantastical stories that spread like syrup among urban and not-so-urban areas alike. But these anecdotes contradict sociologists' beliefs about the survival of stories—that they provide insightful social commentary.
Psychologists at Stanford and Duke universities had another theory. "We proposed that ideas are selected and retained in part based on their ability to tap emotions that are common across individuals," explains Chip Heath, Ph.D., an associate professor of organizational behavior at Stanford. Heath and his colleagues decided to examine anecdotes that inspire disgust (some 25 percent of urban legends fit the bill). They took 12 urban legends and presented undergraduates at Duke University with three increasingly revolting versions of each story. For example, someone develops vacation photos and discovers that their toothbrush has been photographed in close proximity to a hotel-worker's (a) fingernail, (b) armpit or (c) anus.
