A neuroscientist explains why evangelicals are wired to believe Trump’s lies

[phands]

Fascinating stuff, and yet more evidence that religion is actually dangerous brain damage....

[FONT=&quot]One reason Trump supporters believe his lies comes from a basic fact about the brain: it takes more mental effort to reject an idea as false than to accept it as true. In other words, it’s easier to believe than to not.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]This fact is based on a landmark study published in the journal PLOS ONE in 2009, which asked the simple question, how is the brain activated differently during a state of belief compared to a state of disbelief? To test this, participants were asked whether or not they believed in a series of statements while their brain activity was being imaged by an fMRI scanner. Some sentences were simple and fact-based (California is larger than Rhode Island), while others were more abstract and subjective (God probably does not exist). The results showed the activation of distinct but often overlapping brain areas in the belief and disbelief conditions. While these imaging results are complicated to interpret, the electrical patterns also showed something that was fairly straightforward. Overall, there was greater brain activation that persisted for longer during states of disbelief. Greater brain activation requires more cognitive resources, of which there is a limited supply. What these findings show is that the mental process of believing is simply less work for the brain, and therefore often favored. The default state of the human brain is to accept what we are told, because doubt takes effort. Belief, on the other hand, comes easily.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]This troubling finding makes sense from an evolutionary standpoint. If children questioned every single fact they were being taught, learning would occur at a rate so slow that it would be a hindrance. But this fact could be just as easily applied to both the political left and right. So how does it explain why conservatives, specifically evangelicals, are so easily duped by Donald Trump?[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]For Christian fundamentalists, being taught to suppress critical thinking begins at a very early age. It is the combination of the brain’s vulnerability to believing unsupported facts and aggressive indoctrination that create the perfect storm for gullibility. [/FONT]

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/neuroscientist-explains-evangelicals-wired-believe-trumps-lies/

 

[rousseau]

I don't see how it follows from this study that religion is dangerous brain damage. To me it sounds more like religion is the outcome of a specific kind of thinking, rather than a cause of that thinking.

 

[phands]

I don't see how it follows from this study that religion is dangerous brain damage. To me it sounds more like religion is the outcome of a specific kind of thinking, rather than a cause of that thinking.

Given the context and content of this thread, that's a reasonable observation.

However, there is now abundant evidence (which I have posted here about a few times) that religion, especially evangelicals and fundies, is actually brain damage, in that the brains of those people are differently wired in a deleterious way.

 

[southernhybrid]

What about the 20 percent, more or less of evangelicals who don't support Trump? I ask because my mother was one of them, and so is my sister. When it came to things like politics, she was very thoughtful and open to evidence. She always voted for Democrats, despite referring to herself as an independent. She felt that much of the Republican ideology was hurtful to the average person. Many of her friends tried unsuccessfully to talk her out of voting for Obama. Does the neuro guy explain why some are able to compartmentalize when it comes to religious beliefs while others can't or don't? I couldn't get your link to work, but it might be due to my computer.

Can we really make generalizations about people based on one aspect of their beliefs? I'm not convinced. I think people are capable of believing some really weird shit, while also being skeptical of other things. I've met plenty of evangelicals who were very smart and thoughtful when it came to many things, but not when it came to their Christian beliefs. I'd put some of the Christian doctors and PAs that I've known in that category. Most of the doctors in my town are religious. An atheist friend of mine who works as a social worker in the area, has told me that she has been impressed by the amount of charity work that some of them do. If they supported Trump, it probably had more to do with wanting to pay lower taxes or because they were always Republicans. I doubt it had much to do with religion. So, call me skeptical of that neurologist's conclusions.

 

[rousseau]

I don't see how it follows from this study that religion is dangerous brain damage. To me it sounds more like religion is the outcome of a specific kind of thinking, rather than a cause of that thinking.

Given the context and content of this thread, that's a reasonable observation.

However, there is now abundant evidence (which I have posted here about a few times) that religion, especially evangelicals and fundies, is actually brain damage, in that the brains of those people are differently wired in a deleterious way.

Just seems like a case of putting the cart before the horse to me.

Religion is the result of how we think, so it's effects are ultimately derived from humans themselves. You can quash religion, but the thinking that breeds this type of failure to question is still there. For the most part it's genetic.

 

[phands]

Religion is the result of how we think, so it's effects are ultimately derived from humans themselves. You can quash religion, but the thinking that breeds this type of failure to question is still there. For the most part it's genetic.

Agreed...we have self-selected for the brain-damage of religion for millennia. Those who weren't in the ingroup tended to get dead and didn't get to breed.

 

[rousseau]

Religion is the result of how we think, so it's effects are ultimately derived from humans themselves. You can quash religion, but the thinking that breeds this type of failure to question is still there. For the most part it's genetic.

Agreed...we have self-selected for the brain-damage of religion for millennia. Those who weren't in the ingroup tended to get dead and didn't get to breed.

I think it goes a bit deeper than that, mainly attributable to our tendency to assign agency to things when there is none. Most people in a pre-scientific era are not genetically inclined to look at the universe and think 'this is just random nothingness'.

Science is a secondary antidote, but it is only that: secondary. The mechanism for us to fall for religion is deeply embedded in our psyche. If not religion, it just becomes some other kind of fantasy.

 

[4321lynx]

Religion is the result of how we think, so it's effects are ultimately derived from humans themselves. You can quash religion, but the thinking that breeds this type of failure to question is still there. For the most part it's genetic.

Agreed...we have self-selected for the brain-damage of religion for millennia. Those who weren't in the ingroup tended to get dead and didn't get to breed.

I think it goes a bit deeper than that, mainly attributable to our tendency to assign agency to things when there is none. Most people in a pre-scientific era are not genetically inclined to look at the universe and think 'this is just random nothingness'.

Science is a secondary antidote, but it is only that: secondary. The mechanism for us to fall for religion is deeply embedded in our psyche. If not religion, it just becomes some other kind of fantasy.

Completely agree with rousseau.
But to say that we "self-selected for the brain damage of religion" as phands did, is like saying that we self-selected for lumbar vertebral disc damage by walking on our hind legs. I think we evolved to do both, no self-selection involved, or indeed possible.

 

[southernhybrid]

I'm skeptical that all or most religious people have brain damage. Brain damage leaves one impaired and unable to function is some ways, usually many ways. Maybe people who are religious are wired a little bit differently, but I don't equate that with brain damage. Besides that, people believe all kinds of weird stuff. I've even known atheists that believe weird stuff. Is the implication here that most humans are brain damaged? Sorry, but that sounds a bit extreme to me, a person who has actually cared for mentally ill and brain damaged patients. Maybe some people are just more gullible or don't take the time to explore why they believe what they do. Maybe they just like the comfort that their beliefs have provided them. I don't think we really know why some folks believe in the supernatural and others don't. Tradition probably has a lot to do with it as well.

 

[phands]

I think it goes a bit deeper than that, mainly attributable to our tendency to assign agency to things when there is none. Most people in a pre-scientific era are not genetically inclined to look at the universe and think 'this is just random nothingness'.

Science is a secondary antidote, but it is only that: secondary. The mechanism for us to fall for religion is deeply embedded in our psyche. If not religion, it just becomes some other kind of fantasy.

Agreed..it is deeper. It's a combination of factors, but a primary one is that the modern propensity for religion is a maladaption of the survival mechanism for tribalism which allowed humans to survive in groups so we could see off predators...and other groups of humans.

In response to 3421lynx , we did self-select...humans killed other humans who didn't agree with them, so they got out-bred by the religionists, as that was a dominant factor.

 

[Politesse]

We may be "brain damaged", but at least some of us know how to read and interpret a study. This one, for instance, says nothing about brain damage, nor does it highlight religious beliefs as being fundamentally different in character from non-religious beliefs. From the report:

Despite the fact that religious believers and nonbelievers accepted and rejected diametrically opposite statements in half of our experimental trials, the same neural systems were engaged in both groups throughout. This would seem to rule out the possibility that these results could be explained by any property of the stimuli apart from their being deemed “true” or “false” by the subjects in our study.

This was true even in cases where the groups must presumably have very different conscious reasons for choosing as they did. For instance, a strong emotional reaction was attached to people's responses to "blasphemous" statements, whether or not they were religious:

Finally, there were several regions that showed greater signal in both groups in response to “blasphemous” statements (i.e. those that ran counter to Christian doctrine). The ventral striatum signal in this contrast suggests that decisions about these stimuli may have been more rewarding for both groups: Nonbelievers may take special pleasure in making assertions that explicitly negate religious doctrine, while Christians may enjoy rejecting such statements as false.

Some serious over-interpretation of data there, but solid data in any case.

It's actually a very interesting study, with some challenging implications in the realm of neuroplasticity and social formation; I don't know if I am more disappointed that Raw--- made a nonsensical thinkpiece out of it, or that a community of supposed skeptics would happily consume that thinkpiece without checking the source for themselves.


Getting tired of this racist "tribalism" crap, too. Actual "tribes" do not, in fact, tend to be subdivided into religious and political parties that hate each other. That is a capitalist nation-state problem, and capitalist nation-states should own it. Just because "everyone says it" doesn't make it true. And we would be better off not using the term "tribe" at all - it has been considered outdated by for many years by scientists, and is primarily used in political or media contexts as a blanket pejorative for indigenous peoples- especially if this sort of neo-Darwinist pseudoscience is all we're going to use it for.

 

[southernhybrid]

I agree with most of your post, and you're not the first person I've known or heard that has said we shouldn't use the word tribe to describe our in groups. But, I think that's
a bit over the top. The word tribe has about ten different definitions. For example, "a class or set of persons, especially one with strong common traits or interests". So, I think it's okay to use the term tribe to describe any group that closely identifies with certain beliefs, or values. Sometimes political correctness gets a bit crazy, imo. Words usually have more than one meaning. The use of tribe as it's been used lately isn't racist. There is no reason to start interpreting it that way.

What term do you prefer? The term that comes to my mind is in group, but that almost sounds too academic to me.

 

[Lion IRC]

Religion is the result of how we think, so it's effects are ultimately derived from humans themselves. You can quash religion, but the thinking that breeds this type of failure to question is still there. For the most part it's genetic.

Agreed...we have self-selected for the brain-damage of religion for millennia. Those who weren't in the ingroup tended to get dead and didn't get to breed.

I think it goes a bit deeper than that, mainly attributable to our tendency to assign agency to things when there is none. Most people in a pre-scientific era are not genetically inclined to look at the universe and think 'this is just random nothingness'...

Assigning agency to caused events isn't a symptom of brain damage. Agent/mechanism are probably the most sound categories of epistemology available to Homo sapiens.

Absolute true 'spontaneity' undermines determinism and I would have thought that is why capital "A" Agency rather than atheism is the idea which has survived the natural selection crash testing of thousands of years of human thought.

 

[rousseau]

I think it goes a bit deeper than that, mainly attributable to our tendency to assign agency to things when there is none. Most people in a pre-scientific era are not genetically inclined to look at the universe and think 'this is just random nothingness'.

Science is a secondary antidote, but it is only that: secondary. The mechanism for us to fall for religion is deeply embedded in our psyche. If not religion, it just becomes some other kind of fantasy.

Agreed..it is deeper. It's a combination of factors, but a primary one is that the modern propensity for religion is a maladaption of the survival mechanism for tribalism which allowed humans to survive in groups so we could see off predators...and other groups of humans.

In response to 3421lynx , we did self-select...humans killed other humans who didn't agree with them, so they got out-bred by the religionists, as that was a dominant factor.

Yes and no. You could call it a maladaptation, but you could also call it an emergent property of human societies, just something we do.

The illusion is that human nature can be optimized, and everything becomes efficient and logical. Doesn't work that way.

 

[rousseau]

Getting tired of this racist "tribalism" crap, too. Actual "tribes" do not, in fact, tend to be subdivided into religious and political parties that hate each other. That is a capitalist nation-state problem, and capitalist nation-states should own it. Just because "everyone says it" doesn't make it true. And we would be better off not using the term "tribe" at all - it has been considered outdated by for many years by scientists, and is primarily used in political or media contexts as a blanket pejorative for indigenous peoples- especially if this sort of neo-Darwinist pseudoscience is all we're going to use it for.

Tribalism may not be the right word, but I think there is something to it as an aspect of social systems. People are inclined to quickly judge whether someone is in their 'in group' or not, and they then use this information to help or hurt that person.

I don't know what that has to do with religion, though. I'd say religion is self sustaining for reasons besides in-group, out-group stuff. It's self sustaining, mostly, because people literally believe it.

 

[Politesse]

I agree with most of your post, and you're not the first person I've known or heard that has said we shouldn't use the word tribe to describe our in groups. But, I think that's
a bit over the top. The word tribe has about ten different definitions. For example, "a class or set of persons, especially one with strong common traits or interests". So, I think it's okay to use the term tribe to describe any group that closely identifies with certain beliefs, or values. Sometimes political correctness gets a bit crazy, imo. Words usually have more than one meaning. The use of tribe as it's been used lately isn't racist. There is no reason to start interpreting it that way.

What term do you prefer? The term that comes to my mind is in group, but that almost sounds too academic to me.

The thing is, if you have any doubts, people usually helpfully follow it up with a clarification, like "you know, in the stone age", so you'll know it is civilizational prejudice rather than just a poor choice of words. And what they say next, of course, never has anything to do with real studies of the neolithic or its cultures.

I usually say "factionalism" if I want to refer to a fracturing state. But I would be okay with any word that isn't strongly connected to common colonial justifications for invasion and genocide.