Does feeling "out of control" make people more likely to believe "weird" things? I strongly recommend listening to yesterday's Talk of the Nation "Science Friday" broadcast:
New research indicates that in situations in which a person is not in control, they're more likely to spot patterns where none exist, see illusions, and believe in conspiracy theories. In a series of experiments, researchers created situations in which people had less control over their situation, and then tested how likely the participants were to see imaginary images embedded in snowy pictures. The researchers also had participants write about either a situation in which they had control, or a situation in which they didn't, and then presented stories involving strange coincidences. People who had written about a situation in which they were not in control were more likely to draw non-existent connections between the coincidences, the researchers found.
Listen here.
How does this relate to religious belief, which some people consider mere superstition? Anyone?
1 comment
Thanks for posting this, Beryl. My favorite moment in this Science Friday segment came when a caller pointed out that human beings are notoriously prone to confuse correlation ("the mutual relation of two or more things, parts, etc." - dictionary.com) with cause/causality ("a person or thing that acts, happens, or exists in such a way that some specific thing happens as a result; the producer of an effect," - dictionary.com). It seems that people confuse correlation with causality all the time in religious groups. Yet, is there anything wrong with consciously deciding to believe, even in the presence of logically questionable data, that a mere correlation constitutes actual cause, if such belief is forumlated in the service of a positive goal? How many times have we heard someone bubble away about how a wonderful thing happened to them that would never have occurred without their religious practices? How many times have we consciously decided to ignore or quash any doubts that threatened to form in our minds as to whether a deliciously positive event in our own or someone else's life was actually the direct result of a spiritual practice?My reaction has always been, so what if it seems like a stretch? The person's cancer is in remission, they got the job, saved their marriage or whatever! If I keep practicing like I'm supposed to, I can do cool stuff too! I haven't found any better way to control my own universe, so why not believe these peoples' stories and follow their example? On a totally personal level, I say "great!" Whatever floats your boat floats my own, and puts a smile in my heart as well, regardless of how you think you got there. And, I won't deny that I have a few of my own positive stories about practice!The "dark side" of the correlation/cause question, especially in the more "proselytizing" religious approaches, is that they so often take an innocent personal "stretche" and use it to manufacture a variety of subtly (or not so subtly) implied mandates, with the full force of fear and superstition to back them up. What starts out as a positive, harmless personal leap into the miraculous, when expressed on the group level, becomes "join us because we are happy because we practice this," with the implication being that "you are suffering because you don't" (creation of a doomed outsider). This soon leads to messages that, "you are causing your own suffering, and the suffering of others in your life because you don't practice this." And, as an added bonus, most scriptural authorities never fail to remind us, in a thousand mysterious phrases, that "if you don't accept our argument and do as we say, you will end up in this or that (insert your own) Hell."On another note, I found it curious that a team of business professors, as opposed to researchers in the disciplines of psychology, medicine, political science or even religion, would be studying this question. My own conspiracy-theory-prone mind immediately speculated that the underlying purpose of this study (and the grant money it no doubt garnered from the federal government and corporate donors) is to further bolster knowledge of how to use advertising to circumvent the well placed suspicions of consumers/citizens, and convince us to keep buying crap we don't need, or accept ridiculous political propositions related to "change," despite the damage we can see been done to our personal finances by greedy, irresponsible corporations and politicians. Second, I wondered why anyone would bother to "study" something so obvious in the first place (other than to keep priming the flow of funding for cushy research chairs). To propose that people look for patterns and conspiracies in situations where they feel they have no control is like theorizing that the reason most people can pick up a fork is because they wrap their fingers around its handle and apply a light pressure to both sides. Like, duh, as my kids used to say.Ell