When smart people believe stupid things

By Matt Young

I belong to a discussion list that is at least nominally related to The Panda’s Thumb. Recently, someone asked the following question:

What is the psychology behind contrarian belief systems? Having been involved in this now for some 30 years, I have concluded, as have others, that this phenomenon of latching on to a nonsense belief and defending it to the death against all reason is, at its root, psychologically and emotionally driven. And it certainly isn’t limited to creationism. Across the board, from climate change denial to anti-vaccine hysteria to insisting that elections are rigged, I believe the same thing is at work. Consider the characteristics:

  • Impervious to facts or logic. The facts simply must be wrong.
  • A desire to focus on the best and most robust scientific (or political) explanations.
  • Along with that, attacking the most prominent scientists; Darwin, Einstein, etc.
  • And several other characteristics that one might describe.

I throw this out to the group because it might point to finding more effective ways of combatting all of this nonsense. Clearly, facts are water off a duck’s back to creationists and other science deniers. They have a mental force field to keep facts and logic out. To me the question becomes, “What is the emotional payoff for this behaviour?” It appears to be overwhelming and compelling for those who adopt this way of thinking.

A psychiatrist, to whom the question was originally directed, responded:

TBH, I don’t know if I have a good answer to this question, even though it is at least adjacent to my field of expertise. But I do have thoughts.

It is easy to presume that we, as a species, are motivated to seek the truth because we are unusually good at finding the truth. However, it is more likely that we, like every other organism possessed of a degree of sentience, are primarily motivated to do whatever feels good. If that results in beliefs that align with reality, fine. But beliefs do not necessarily align with reality.

I wonder if some of us get an unusual amount of pleasure from learning what is true, and that this overrides whatever discomfort or displeasure accompanies this knowledge. This may not be the case for creationists and other denialists, for whom abandoning their false beliefs exacts a psychological cost they are not motivated to pay.

I’ve become a bit cynical in my time engaging in this debate, having seen so few people ever change their position despite having enough intelligence and knowledge to understand why they are wrong, and being presented evidence by people who are able to communicate very effectively.

At this point, I don’t think the priority is to convince people to change their minds. Rather, it ought to be to get denialists out of positions of influence and power – and keep them out. That is particularly the case in the US at this time.

Biologist John Harshman noted,

All the people I know personally, or online, who were de-programmed from creationism began by studying science and noticing that creationism (that is, biblical literalism) didn’t make sense when compared to the data. Obviously this doesn’t work for everyone, since, e.g., Kurt Wise is still a creationist.

John Wilkins, a philosopher of biology, recommended his article, Are Creationists Rational?, of which I reproduce the abstract:

Creationism is usually regarded as an irrational set of beliefs. In this paper I propose that the best way to understand why individual learners settle on any mature set of beliefs is to see that as the developmental outcome of a series of “fast and frugal” boundedly rational inferences rather than as a rejection of reason. This applies to those whose views are opposed to science in general. A bounded rationality model of belief choices both serves to explain the fact that folk traditions tend to converge on “anti-modernity”, and to act as a default hypothesis, deviations from which we can use to identify other, arational, influences such as social psychological, economic and individual dispositions. I propose some educational and public policy strategies that might decrease the proportion of learners who find creationism and anti-science in general a rational choice.

And chemist Paul Braterman offered this reference:

Stephan Lewandowski and colleagues have put together a great deal of work about dealing with disinformation, e.g., The Debunking Handbook, 2020, with over a hundred references. It becomes much more difficult when the erroneous belief is part of an individual’s identity, such as beliefs linked to religion (as creationism invariably is, apart from a few philosophers), or tribal loyalty, as in the collective rejection of elitism, including scientific authority.

I will leave further discussion to the Comments.