Why Do Smart People Believe Weird Things?

 

Carl Sagan, in his last book Demon-Haunted World, expressed his growing concern in the growth of belief in the paranormal such as astrology, witchcraft, spiritualism, Loc Ness Monster, Bigfoot, etc.  Many academics bemoan the fact that Americans, including their students, seem unable to distinguish science from pseudoscience, history from pseudohistory, or sense from nonsense:  “The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations of pseudo-science and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance” (25-26).  Sagan  laments, “If we teach only the findings and products of science—no matter how useful and even inspiring they may be—without communicating its critical method, how can the average person possibly distinguish science from pseudoscience?” (21).  Michael Shermer’s Why People Believe Weird Things may offer some insights into understanding why humans believe the things they do. 

 

More than any other reason, people believe what they want to, despite evidence to the contrary.  Shermer elaborates with four explanatory reasons these beliefs persist:

  1. immediate gratification
  2. simplicity
  3. morality and meaning
  4. hope springs eternal

 

Why do these irrational beliefs persist even among many college students despite an emphasis on critical thinking in the classroom?  In other words, why do smart people believe weird things? 

  1. Intelligence doesn’t seem to necessarily shape one’s beliefs.
  2. Often smart people’s intelligence is domain specific.
  3. Smart people are not necessarily less prejudiced and authoritarian, but educated people are less so.  Unfortunately students today are often taught what to think but not how to think. (“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking” (Sagan 25).
  4. Believers tend to be high in external locus of control, whereas skeptics tend to be high in internal locus of control.  People with high external locus of control believe that circumstances are beyond their control, i.e. things just happen.  Those with a high internal locus of control tend to believe they make things happen.  So the former tend to be more superstitious and believe in ESP, precognition, witchcraft, spiritualism, etc.
  5. Smart people are better at defending beliefs arrived at for non-smart reasons since even they are corrupted by intellectual attribution bias and confirmation bias that we all suffer from.  Intellectual attribution bias occurs when we identify environmental or personality causes in our own favor, that is we take credit for our good actions and blame a situation for our bad ones.

Confirmation bias is the tendency to seek or interpret evidence favorable to already existing beliefs and to ignore or reinterpret evidence unfavorable to already existing beliefs.  Thus we see people convinced of weird things such as Area 51, Bible codes, alien abductions, Loch Ness and Sasquatch monsters, Atlantis and Lemuria, etc., despite evidence to the contrary.

Although “we are all embedded in a worldview, locked in a paradigm, and ensconced in a culture,” intellectuals attempt to be aware of this and transcend their biases to follow wherever the evidence leads them.  This may lead to cognitive dissonance and skepticism, but that is preferable to false beliefs.

On the other hand, there are those unwilling to follow wherever the evidence leads, who will believe proof is not necessary for true believers and that proof is not possible for unbelievers.

 

As Shermer concludes:

“[B]eing either high or low in intelligence is orthogonal to and independent of the normalness or weirdness of beliefs one holds.  But these variables are not without some interaction effects.  High intelligence…makes one skilled at defending beliefs arrived at for non-smart reasons….

 

Perkins (1981)…found a positive relationship between intelligence and the ability to justify beliefs, and a negative relationship between intelligence and the ability to consider other beliefs as viable.  That is to say, smart people are better at rationalizing their beliefs with reasoned arguments, but as a consequence they are less open to considering other positions” (303).

 

So is everyone’s truth the same and there is no objective truth or any way to arrive at objective truth?  I say there is objective truth (a real world out there that we perceive imperfectly through our senses) that we can approximate better than ever in the history of the world through the evidence-based scientific method.  Any truth claim should be falsifiable.  If not, assent can only be established through appeal to authority and that is why we have so many religions and gurus around the world, each claiming they have the Truth.  What is a person to do?  Use evidenced-based critical thinking skills to discriminate truth from fatuous myths.

 

“But if we don’t practice the tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us—and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, a world of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who saunters along” (Sagan 38-9).