Great Illusion

by Paul Singh

  A classic experiment was conducted by psychologists who staged a fake theft in public. A confederate (an actor) comes and screams that someone stole his radio. The camera crew shows up (all actors) to interview the victim and take eye-witness testimony from people around the scene of crime, people who saw the theft, people who saw the radio and the person running away with the radio. It is amazing to find how many peoples’ brains manufactured a belief around the theft of this radio and many other events associated with the pretend scenario, a staged theft that never occurred. Again, such experimental findings have profound implications for those who have religious beliefs based on their religious experiences.

  There are numerous examples in the research that show that peoples’ brains see what they already believe. A panda that escaped a zoo in Rotterdam in 1988 was in the news and hundreds of people in the city had panda sightings all over town days after the news broke. Later investigation showed that the panda was killed outside the zoo right after it escaped. So what were those sightings about, days after the Panda was already killed? Does any reasonable person seriously believe that religious people’s brains are uniquely different and that their brains somehow work differently from everyone else’s? Is it possible that the religious experiences are also delusions like those we all experience on a regular basis? Do we think the religious folks and their brains experience the world differently and therefore should not be subject to scrutiny? If we are talking about the same human brain that we all have, then religious experiences are very likely to be delusions as well, like most other delusions that people experience though their nervous systems.

  To reiterate, our brains invent details to fill in the gaps in our memories. Memories are constructions, not the passive recording of immediate experience, as most of us believe. Our brains automatically stitch together incoherent perceptions from the outside world so that we can have one continuous picture of reality. This cognitive process is called confabulation. In this sense, we invent false memories and experiences. The fact that our brains are capable of constructing false memories was proven by the 1980’s epidemic of what has been called false memory syndrome. The false memory syndrome movement owed its origin to a book published by Bass and Davis called The Courage to Heal. They attempted to dig out repressed memories through hypnosis from people who were supposedly sexually abused in childhood. This led to thousands of people inventing new memories under hypnosis, a hyper suggestive state, in which the subject subconsciously invents and fabricates memories through suggestion and sensory input that the subject can process only partially just as one does in an early morning wakeful dream state.

  It has been very easy to create false memories by simple lab experiments. For example, give subjects a list of words with the same theme, perhaps, a list of fruits and then have them memorize it. You can give them very subtle suggestions by giving a theme to the words and then by showing them another list that includes words that were not, in fact, on the first list but are related to the theme. Subjects construct a false memory of having seen those words on the first list because they fit with the theme. This is probably the best example of a simple experiment one can do at home. This example does not, however, explain more complex false memories which are deeply intertwined with emotional responses to intense experiences over a lifetime.

  When it comes to more complex memories, there are often social demands and other motivational factors that may cause us to bring our memories in line with our inner model of beliefs. Children are particularly susceptible to suggestibility in creating false memories. That is why some consider teaching a specific religion to children a form of child abuse, because these memories become so ingrained and reinforced over time. For example, many children who grow up in churches and other religious institutions will grow up to be permanently delusional about the reality of our world and hate those who disagree with their religious beliefs. This does more harm than good to society in the sense that now it will take an insurmountable effort for brain-washed individuals to be weaned off their belief system that has been hammered into their brains. Very few people are able to escape such psychosocial conditioning. This is not to suggest that we outlaw such child abuse. It is neither practical nor enforceable to do so.

  The brain is able to generate false experiences primarily because it is a repository of numerous false memories. In one study, participants read an advertisement for a new but false brand of popcorn that vividly described both the taste and feel of the corn. A week later, participants were asked whether they were actually given the popcorn to taste or whether it was just described to them. One third of the people who were never exposed to the popcorn remembered having eaten it. In other words, they inserted themselves into the memory of the event they only read about. Imagine what the results would be if subjects were questioned three years later instead of three weeks later. For this reason, an external and objective scientific verification is needed to test people’s beliefs that are often rooted in long term false memories. Not all, but most of our long term memories are false or at least significantly distorted due to reconstructions, fabrications, inventions, additions, deletions, new insertions, and confabulations.

  Our memories deceive us every step of the way and hamper our ability to see reality the way it is. Our brains constantly generate false observations leading to false memories that lead to false beliefs. Yet we tend to take the truth of our experiences for granted. Our brains deceive us and lead us to conclusions that often have little to do with truth. What we see, hear, and experience is not a direct recording of the outside world but an active and custom-designed manufacturing in the brain. Information we receive through the five senses is filtered, compared, confabulated, and finally woven into a narrative that fits our assumptions and beliefs about the world that we have gradually constructed over time. Our need to defend our beliefs carves these pre-existing beliefs in stone with a fat chance for escape. Cognitive biases result from our beliefs that further plague our thinking. If you wonder how some Christians have spoken personally with Jesus Christ or communicated with the Holy Spirit after hearing so much about it in their church, month after month and year after year, look no further. Know that childhood anchoring, reinforcements, familiarity, availability, and exposure biases reaffirm and solidify belief systems. One has to make an extraordinary effort to look outside the box and escape this psychological prison.

  There are various processes that occur in the long term memory that alter the content of memories, making human memory extremely fallible. For example, we often see and hear what is not there. This happens because our brains work by pattern recognition. We see patterns in randomness; for example, we may see a picture of an animal on a designed tile floor or the Virgin Mary in a cheese cake. This is called visual paradolia. Other examples of visual paradolia are seeing shapes in the clouds or seeing animals in the starry sky—which is what, by the way, gave rise to the zodiac signs.

  We also have a tendency to hear patterns in audio stimuli. For example, ghost busters on TV shows hear this in their brain, thinking that they are listening to ghosts in a haunted house. They call it EVP (electronic voice phenomenon). I personally conducted an observation in a so-called haunted house and listened and recorded carefully for hours. When a voice of a crying baby popped up, I quickly followed the sound and found this to be coming from the old plumbing system. The ghost busters believed that the spirit of the child who died prematurely was upset. This cry was so real that anyone without a fair degree of scientific literacy would have believed it to be supernatural in origin. It turns out that the brain constantly tries to match sounds with its own pre-existing phonemes. There are only a limited number of units of sounds called phonemes that we consolidate in our brain by the age of four. For the rest of our lives everything we hear will be shaped by these phonemes that are hardwired into our brains.

  In addition to our evolved tendencies for heuristics, mental short-cuts, paradolias, pattern recognitions, false perceptions, a
nd falsely constructed memories of events and experiences, we are strongly influenced by those around us and our cultures, so much so that we can even get caught up in group or mass delusions. These mass delusions influence our fanatical belief systems. We have all evolved with these tendencies. This is how superstitions are born. Humans are intensely social and emotional creatures. We respond to the beliefs of others, especially to our own social group and to the broad culture. It makes it all the more important for those of us concerned to keep our scientific literacy and critical thinking caps donned so as not to slip into the group dynamics.

  Our Emotional Needs

  Harold Maslow’s categorization of human emotional needs is helpful in figuring out how and why we behave in certain ways and believe what we believe. All our behaviors are essentially adaptive, according to Maslow. All our emotions are involuntary. This includes fear, disgust, hatred, anger, envy, jealously, sadness, and happiness. We evolved to reject certain foods because of their look or color or odor; we did not evolve to calculate the odds of getting sick if we eat a certain food. Children often demonstrate this basic tendency to reject foods based on color, look, or smell. Our children are our window to the world of human nature. We evolved to run or fight when we encounter a dangerous situation; we did not evolve to figure out if there is real predator hiding behind the bushes. An attempt to try to figure that out might kill us, and it might be too late to escape. We are essentially slaves to the intelligence of our primitive emotional brains in the sense that emotional responses are highly adaptive behaviors. However, we have also evolved to fulfill some higher level emotional needs such as the need to be safe and be loved, to have self-esteem, and to seek self-actualization. We have the need to feel that we are, at least, in some control of our lives. We do not wish to be at the mercy of the hands of a capricious universe that “plays dice” with us. For this reason, we are inclined to believe in superstition.

  We like to believe, for example, that we exercise some control over the events, and we like to be equal partners and players in determining the destiny of our own universe. So we believe that if we engage in some activities, we will have some control over events and we will be more protected or more successful. We might even beat death and become immortal by performing certain rituals. For example, we evolved from ancestors who believed in sympathetic magic, the belief that like effects have like causes. Interesting research by Whitson and Glinsky shows that actually too much lack of control leads people to see more patterns of collective agency in random events. This explains why some people believe that an invisible hand is at work behind the events that we find overwhelming. For example, we dread death and therefore invoke magic, the magic of immortality, to feel that we are in control, not death.

  One widespread superstition is that big effects must have big causes. For example, many people believe that the assassin of Kennedy could not have been a lone nut. He must have been part of a conspiracy by some big powerful government; how could an event that changed the world be affected by one insignificant individual. Such cognitive biases of the human brain explain why most of us believe that something as complex as the universe could not have just come out of random quantum fluctuations. We believe, against all evidence, that big consequences must have big causes.

  We also like things to be simple because we do not wish to be overwhelmed in trying to understand an enormously complex world. So we boil down the most complex things in the environment to a simple set of rules. These rules are adaptive but unfortunately they are also responsible for the rise of stereotypes and often lead to bigotry. We simplify things because the detailed understanding of our complex universe can be nerve-wracking and bewildering. I have noticed in my own professions that physicians often look for one simple working diagnosis for a complex set of symptoms.

  We also believe that everything happens for a reason and that there is a meaning and purpose behind everything, a belief that once held an adaptive advantage in our evolutionary past. We also believe in spirit or essence, an evolutionary adaptation of the brain. This explains why a child who is attached to a particular toy will not accept an exact replica of that toy. He feels there is some essence in his own toy, even though he knows this is just a toy. People refuse to wear a dry-cleaned sweater once worn by a serial killer even when they are offered money to do so, but they would wear the same sweater and even pay for wearing it if they were told that it had once belonged to Albert Einstein. This shows we have evolved to see objects as possessing an essence or spirit.

  We have the need for social acceptance and respect from others. We are intensely social beings with the need for self-esteem and the need for being consistent all the time to preserve our ego and avoid social stigma. Many of our decisions really depend on our desire to become socially accepted. We also have a tendency to justify our behavior by seeking external causes. We are extremely resistant to admitting an error because it hurts our ego, which is also an adaptive behavior. All these emotional human needs have been shown to be psychological adaptations of the human brain and not simply maladaptive behavior.

  We all wish to be respected. So we try to justify our behavior by blaming external causes. We are often self-serving and kind to ourselves in explaining our own behaviors. In order to preserve our need for self-esteem and consistency in our beliefs and goals, we manipulate and spin ideas in any way we can to appear consistent, even when we have no good reason to believe that what we say is true. We become skilled at putting a socially acceptable spin on our actions by hiding our motivations as we grow up. Infants and children give us a window into human nature because they are inept at hiding their motivations. As we grow older, our basic motivations and desires don’t change very much. We learn social skills and learn to pretend, which is both good and bad. It is good that we develop social skills for survival but it is bad because we become hypocritically attached to false beliefs by hiding our true motivations. And we usually do it without even knowing that we are doing it.

  We have adapted to believe that things and events have an overarching meaning and purpose. This gives us a sense of control and relieves our anxiety about random events in our lives. One can easily see why such adaptation would have been necessary in evolution. It is our emotional need to feel safe and in control of things. To overcome our enslavement to our emotional brain or at least mitigate its influence over our lives we need emotional intelligence. But this requires a very high expenditure of energy in the brain which has to filter our beliefs through the neocortex in order to discard unfounded beliefs. Sir Arthur Conon Doyle is an iconic example of someone who lacked emotional intelligence. Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, a hyper-rational fictional character, was fooled by a hoax perpetrated by two little girls who claimed that they were being visited by winged fairies in their village. They cut out pictures of fairies from books and put them on sticks and then photographed them as proof that fairies were real. Doyle fell for this flimsy evidence because he had a deep desire that there really was a spiritual realm populated with fairies and other such ethereal things. His wishful thinking got the better of his reason. The creator of the most rational character, Sherlock Holmes, failed to use his emotional intelligence. Ironically, it was Arthur Conan Doyle who said, “You must fit your theories to your facts, and not find facts to fit your theories.” Such a slip or error in human thinking is only possible because of the way the human brain has evolved. And we are all vulnerable to such nonsense. No one completely escapes the desires and adaptations of the emotional brain; not Isaac Newton, not Einstein, not Galileo.

  Cultural Delusions

  A delusion is a fixed belief that you refuse to change even when faced with overwhelming evidence that it is not true. Delusions occur on a very large spectrum, schizophrenia being at the most extreme end of the spectrum. To a lesser degrees, even healthy, normal individuals can have delusions of a more harmless sort. We may call it a disorder when it becomes severe, but when it is much less severe, we may call it a per
sonality trait or schizophrenia or psychosis. In essence, a delusion involves impaired reality testing and is caused by the patterns we imagine we see in unknown and unexpected events that surround us and envelop our daily lives. If a bizarre belief gradually evolves into a mass delusion, the delusion becomes accepted as something benign or harmless because now everyone believes in it. It becomes accepted as a fact in the eyes of believers. It is no longer considered to be a mental illness, no matter how strange or unrealistic the belief may be.

  For example, if only one single individual believed that bread and wine literally turned into the body and blood of Christ, such a person would be hospitalized with a diagnosis of schizophrenia and treated with anti-psychotics. However, it has now become accepted as a part of a belief system among millions and it no longer is considered a form of mass delusion. But that is precisely why it is a mass delusion. And, indeed, it ceases to be a form of typical mental illness despite being a mass delusion because now its origins are rooted in a belief system rather than in an individual’s pathological condition. It is a mass delusion of the sort that poses no immediate threat to anyone or society. Mass delusions can become belief systems that are passed down from generation to generation. Those in the group who dare challenge the belief are often cast out as heretics or severely punished.

  There are many types of delusions—paranoid delusions, grandiose delusions, personal empowerment delusions, and even delusions of hopelessness. Delusions can affect more than just one person at one time. A folie a deux, a phenomenon well understood by psychologists, is a delusion shared by two people. Typically there is a dominant person, the one with the fixed delusion, from which the delusion originates. There is a more passive partner who is the recipient of the delusion. A folie a deux delusion tends to occur in isolation in a very close intimate relationship. A typical example of this is the delusion of the prophet Mohammad in 620 AD when he reported to Fatima, his wife, that the angel Gabriel spoke to him in the caves and that Allah started dictating the Qur’an to him through an angel. The prophet's wife, Fatima, was the first recipient of this delusion.