Science establishes link between brain damage and religion

[Underseer]

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/03/scientists-established-link-brain-damage-religious-fundamentalism/

Scientists have established a link between brain damage and religious fundamentalism

BOBBY AZARIAN, RAW STORY
12 MAR 2018 AT 16:36 ET

A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.

[[ent]hellip[/ent]]

I tricked you!

I actually want to complain about science journalism and the links that get shared on your social media feed, and tried to use your confirmation bias to suck you into the thread.

First, this is an article from Raw Story. I do read a lot of articles on Raw Story, but it's a place for political opinion pieces. Why the fuck should I take science claims from them seriously?

Further, the title is clearly inflammatory and misleading.

More importantly, I see no links to the original published research mentioned in the article. Sure, the published article is probably behind a paywall, but shouldn't they at least give us the chance to verify for ourselves all the claims made in the article?

Everything I just said is probably remedial for most posters around here, but it can't hurt to occasionally have discussions about this sort of thing, since it was threads in this forum (two name changes ago) where I started to learn the importance of stuff like this.

 

[Underseer]

I stand corrected. The second word in the article (study) is indeed a link. I had a brainfart because I'm an old-timer who is used to links looking different.

Anyway, I invite others to discuss the merits and flaws of this article as a piece of science reporting.

 

[Politesse]

I stand corrected. The second word in the article (study) is indeed a link. I had a brainfart because I'm an old-timer who is used to links looking different.

Anyway, I invite others to discuss the merits and flaws of this article as a piece of science reporting.

That's a mess of a report, to be sure. Makes it sound like there is a link between all fundamentalist persons and a damaged dlPFC, rather than the other way around.

They were trying to get at the functional purpose of the dlPFC and its relation to the rest of the brain by looking at those with dlPFC lesions and comparing. Injury studies have well-known limitations as the authors of the paper rightly note, and I think they did their best to muffle some of the noise created by brain trauma. It is a well-designed study, and I applaud them for hunting down such a large sample size of patients with such a seemingly specific condition.

But this does not imply that people who have fundamentalist views must be damaged in the same area, any more than having pain in one's arm proves that you have fractured your humerus.

Lots of pop psychology nonsense in the article, too. "Empirical beliefs" has meaning only to a philosopher, your brain doesn't know the difference and neither does a neuroscientist.

And theological nonsense. No, religious beliefs aren't always conservative in character.

And not realizing that a lack of mental flexibility affects more than just religious beliefs, seemingly; an atheist would be similarly affected by the same injury despite not harboring any intentional religious beliefs, finding it harder to entertain any new ideas about religion (or philosophy, or politics, or any other similarly creative and variable enterprise) or empathize with those who do following the lesion.

 

[Underseer]

The other way around may actually be worse for fundamentalists.

If a certain kind of brain damage makes someone more likely to become a fundamentalist, what does that imply?

 

[untermensche]

How did you trick me?

I was skeptical coming in.

Rational thinking is something that needs to be taught and practiced and coached.

When beliefs are acquired before rational thinking is acquired these beliefs can be hard to shake. Especially if there is no evidence that can disprove them.

Brain damage is not a factor.

 

[Politesse]

The other way around may actually be worse for fundamentalists.

If a certain kind of brain damage makes someone more likely to become a fundamentalist, what does that imply?

That disruption of the dlPFC often leads to reduced mental flexibility, which by happenstance can cause rigidity in religious matters, among other "right-brained" topics requiring empathy and intuition to fully engage with.

 

[Underseer]

The other way around may actually be worse for fundamentalists.

If a certain kind of brain damage makes someone more likely to become a fundamentalist, what does that imply?

That disruption of the dlPFC often leads to reduced mental flexibility, which by happenstance can cause rigidity in religious matters, among other "right-brained" topics requiring empathy and intuition to fully engage with.

Ugh, I detest that stupid right brain/left brain thing, but your use of scare quotes suggests that you're no fan of it either.

So loss of empathy results in people being more likely to agree with fundamentalists.

Can't we infer from that that fundamentalist beliefs are appealing to people with less capacity for empathy? Can we not infer other things about fundamentalist beliefs from this?

 

[Politesse]

The other way around may actually be worse for fundamentalists.

If a certain kind of brain damage makes someone more likely to become a fundamentalist, what does that imply?

That disruption of the dlPFC often leads to reduced mental flexibility, which by happenstance can cause rigidity in religious matters, among other "right-brained" topics requiring empathy and intuition to fully engage with.

Ugh, I detest that stupid right brain/left brain thing, but your use of scare quotes suggests that you're no fan of it either.

So loss of empathy results in people being more likely to agree with fundamentalists.

Can't we infer from that that fundamentalist beliefs are appealing to people with less capacity for empathy? Can we not infer other things about fundamentalist beliefs from this?

We should consider the test itself; it doesn't test for specific religious doctrines, only a general willingness to consider alternatives to one's position. One could be a Buddhist or an atheist or a hippie transcendentalist and still score high on the fundamentalism rubric. So no, I don't think that it would be reasonable to link specific beliefs of any given tradition based on these results.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Brain damage impairs cognitive flexibility. Who knew.

 

[Jobar]

The authors emphasize that cognitive flexibility and openness aren’t the only things that make brains vulnerable to religious fundamentalism. In fact, their analyses showed that these factors only accounted for a fifth of the variation in fundamentalism scores. Uncovering those additional causes, which could be anything from genetic predispositions to social influences, is a future research project that the researchers believe will occupy investigators for many decades to come, given how complex and widespread religious fundamentalism is and will likely continue to be for some time.

By investigating the cognitive and neural underpinnings of religious fundamentalism, we can better understand how the phenomenon is represented in the connectivity of the brain, which could allow us to someday inoculate against rigid or radical belief systems through various kinds of mental and cognitive exercises.

Though I've read science fiction stories with premises more strange than 'inoculation against rigid or radical belief systems', I strongly doubt that such a thing would ever happen. For one thing, who would dare finance the research? Can you imagine the furor over 'mind control' such a thing would inspire, considering how much resistance there is to simply teaching elements of skeptical thought in US high schools?

 

[braces_for_impact]

I saw this piece on raw story the day it came out, and immediately I was skeptical, probably because of the claim being made, along with the current state of science journalism and it's past track record. I skimmed the study, and was immediately struck by the term "correlation does not imply causation". I decided not to remark on it as to not spread another bad science article that far too many will not look at critically. Fortunately, so far I haven't seen any atheists on Facebook or Twitter tossing this story out there with a haughty laugh in a display of stupidity, but I think it's only a matter of time before I do see it and have to try to get a fellow non-believer to quit acting uncritically.

 

[Speakpigeon]

Brain damage impairs cognitive flexibility. Who knew.

Those with an undamaged brain?

I... I don't know!
EB

 

[Kharakov]

Damnit science, you should not link damaged brains to religion! Someone stop the science before religions are full of non-thinking brains!

 

[ronburgundy]

The media article has problems, the biggest of which is that it implies that fundamentalism is generally a product of brain damage.

"religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex."

Given how few people have the particular brain lesion in question, it certainly could not account for more than a tiny % of fundamentalists.

I skimmed the study, and was immediately struck by the term "correlation does not imply causation".

This isn't a simple correlation study and its data does have implications for causation, just not simplistic neccessary and sufficient type of causation (a concept that has almost no application to any aspect of human cognition).

Correlations are in fact created by underlying causal patterns, the question is which type of causal pattern: X causes Y, Y causes X, or some other variable Z causes both. The general nature of the variables in this case limit the plausibility of some of these. It is highly plausible that a lesion in the brain could cause a psychological state, religious fundamentalism being among them. It is not very plausible that religious fundamentalism or any psychological state could cause a lesion to arise in the brain. Even if being fundamentalist somehow made people act in ways that put them at risk for a physical brain damage, such an indirect probabilistic connection would result in a very weak correlation. But the damaged and healthy controls differed in fundamentalism by .7 standard deviations. That is a large difference on any psychological measure. It tranlates into meaning that 76% of the brain lesion group are more fundamentalists than the average normal control (which includes the 25% of the US population that are fundamentalist).

Similarly, what plausible explanations entail some factor causing both a specific brain lesion and religious fundamentalism? Hard to think of any that could produce such a strong relationship.

That leaves the lesions causing a rise in fundamentalism as the most plausible explanation. In addition, the study provides a test of a psychological mechanism for this causal relation, namely that the lesions caused impairment to general cognitive flexibility which then is increased fundamentalism. First, they showed that among people with damage, the size of the brain lesion predicted the level of fundamentalism. They also showed that the size of the lesion predicted reduced general cognitive flexibility. Then they conducted causal-path model tests of mediation to show that the relation between lesion size and fundamentalism is best explained via an indirect path through effects of cognitive flexibility.

The meaningful implication is not that fundamentalists are brain damaged, but that less cognitive flexibility and openness contribute to religious fundamentalism, with brain damage just being one rather uncommon factor that impacts flexibility and openness.

 

[braces_for_impact]

Yeah that's what I pretty much meant, but I'm lazy. [emoji39]

 

[Underseer]

Ugh, I detest that stupid right brain/left brain thing, but your use of scare quotes suggests that you're no fan of it either.

So loss of empathy results in people being more likely to agree with fundamentalists.

Can't we infer from that that fundamentalist beliefs are appealing to people with less capacity for empathy? Can we not infer other things about fundamentalist beliefs from this?

We should consider the test itself; it doesn't test for specific religious doctrines, only a general willingness to consider alternatives to one's position. One could be a Buddhist or an atheist or a hippie transcendentalist and still score high on the fundamentalism rubric. So no, I don't think that it would be reasonable to link specific beliefs of any given tradition based on these results.

Fair enough.

 

[ronburgundy]

Ugh, I detest that stupid right brain/left brain thing, but your use of scare quotes suggests that you're no fan of it either.

So loss of empathy results in people being more likely to agree with fundamentalists.

Can't we infer from that that fundamentalist beliefs are appealing to people with less capacity for empathy? Can we not infer other things about fundamentalist beliefs from this?

We should consider the test itself; it doesn't test for specific religious doctrines, only a general willingness to consider alternatives to one's position. One could be a Buddhist or an atheist or a hippie transcendentalist and still score high on the fundamentalism rubric. So no, I don't think that it would be reasonable to link specific beliefs of any given tradition based on these results.

This is incorrect. The fundamentalism measure is specifically about endorsing ideas that there is "only one true religion", "one true God", and that believing in that God is more important than being a good person.

The survey items are such that nearly all atheists score at the bottom with monotheists committed to a particular sect scoring high, and the highest scorers being Abrahamic monotheists who place extreme value on the Bible or Koran containing all fundamental important truths.

Here are some of the survey items:

[P]God has given humanity a complete, unfailing guide to happiness and salvation, which must be totally followed.
When you get right down to it, there are basically only two kinds of people in the world: the Righteous, who will be rewarded by God, and the rest, who will not.
The fundamentals of God’s religion should never be tampered with, or compromised with others’ beliefs.
To lead the best, most meaningful life, one must belong to the one, fundamentally true religion.[/P]

These are additional items that are scored in the reverse, so that agreeing with them lowers your fundamentalism score:

[P]“Satan” is just the name people give to their own bad impulses. There really is no such thing as a diabolical “Prince of Darkness” who tempts us.
Whenever science and sacred scripture conflict, science is probably right.
All of the religions in the world have flaws and wrong teachings. There is no perfectly true, right religion.
It is more important to be a good person than to believe in God and the right religion.[/P]

In sum, while you can belong to many various monotheistic sects and have high "fundamentalism", you must believe that your particular sect of monotheism is the one and only true way, and that morality is black and white and determined solely by loyalty to that view of God. IOW, you have to hold the viewpoint that is the core message of the Bible and the Koran.