Even Scientists Believe in Magic
On 19/03/2013 by Matthew Hutson in Psyched!
Extracts:
“In a 2012 Gallup poll, only 15 percent of Americans said humans evolved without God’s guidance. (...) Why are those nonscientific beliefs so persistent? It could be human nature: New research suggests even top scientists are not immune to such magical intuitions.
Over the years, a number of psychologists have suggested that we are promiscuously teleological. Telos is Greek for end or purpose, and teleology is the belief that an object was created or an event occurred to fulfill some purpose. You believe there’s not just a how but a why to its origin, that there’s a mind with intentions behind it. (…)
The default nature of teleological reasoning was revealed in a 2009 paper. Deborah Kelemen and Evelyn Rosset asked Boston University students to judge whether certain inaccurate teleological sentences were true. For example, “Mosses form around rocks to stop soil erosion,” and, “The sun makes light so that plants can photosynthesize.” Subjects mistakenly said they were true in 52 percent of cases. And when given a time limit of 3.2 seconds per sentence, the error rate was even higher, at 61 percent, suggesting that when we don’t have time to correct ourselves, our natural reaction is to assume things were created for a particular function. (…)
So Kelemen tested professional physical scientists. In the first experiment, 80 scholars in chemistry, geoscience, and physics from universities including Harvard, Brown, and MIT were given a test similar to the one in the 2009 paper. They judged the accuracy of sentences such as “Trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe,” with or without time pressure. Without the pressure they fell into the teleological trap in 15 percent of cases. When rushed, they erred 29 percent of the time. The scientists performed better than the 2009 subjects, but again, a bias was revealed. (…)
Our “tenacious teleological tendencies” influence more than our explanations of evolution and moss and photosynthesis. It guides how we find meaning in life (…). The sense that certain things were “meant to be” or even that “everything happens for a reason” is encouraged by the intuitive assumption that a mind is guiding all the events in our lives. (…) Even the most skeptical and well-educated of us can feel we were put here on Earth for a reason, or that stepping in dog poo on the way to an interview is just so typical—of course that had to happen to you."
On 19/03/2013 by Matthew Hutson in Psyched!
We're biased to see a purpose behind things.
Extracts:
“In a 2012 Gallup poll, only 15 percent of Americans said humans evolved without God’s guidance. (...) Why are those nonscientific beliefs so persistent? It could be human nature: New research suggests even top scientists are not immune to such magical intuitions.
Over the years, a number of psychologists have suggested that we are promiscuously teleological. Telos is Greek for end or purpose, and teleology is the belief that an object was created or an event occurred to fulfill some purpose. You believe there’s not just a how but a why to its origin, that there’s a mind with intentions behind it. (…)
The default nature of teleological reasoning was revealed in a 2009 paper. Deborah Kelemen and Evelyn Rosset asked Boston University students to judge whether certain inaccurate teleological sentences were true. For example, “Mosses form around rocks to stop soil erosion,” and, “The sun makes light so that plants can photosynthesize.” Subjects mistakenly said they were true in 52 percent of cases. And when given a time limit of 3.2 seconds per sentence, the error rate was even higher, at 61 percent, suggesting that when we don’t have time to correct ourselves, our natural reaction is to assume things were created for a particular function. (…)
So Kelemen tested professional physical scientists. In the first experiment, 80 scholars in chemistry, geoscience, and physics from universities including Harvard, Brown, and MIT were given a test similar to the one in the 2009 paper. They judged the accuracy of sentences such as “Trees produce oxygen so that animals can breathe,” with or without time pressure. Without the pressure they fell into the teleological trap in 15 percent of cases. When rushed, they erred 29 percent of the time. The scientists performed better than the 2009 subjects, but again, a bias was revealed. (…)
Our “tenacious teleological tendencies” influence more than our explanations of evolution and moss and photosynthesis. It guides how we find meaning in life (…). The sense that certain things were “meant to be” or even that “everything happens for a reason” is encouraged by the intuitive assumption that a mind is guiding all the events in our lives. (…) Even the most skeptical and well-educated of us can feel we were put here on Earth for a reason, or that stepping in dog poo on the way to an interview is just so typical—of course that had to happen to you."
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