Believing

by Michael McGuire

  After several years in Saint Kitts, I began to notice that I could do much the same as the guide. Novice guests and funding-agency administrators who had spent most of their lives in ten-by-fifteen-foot offices and visited the island to see the monkeys were astounded at my “special skill.”

  But is it a special skill? I doubt it. Rather, the skill is learned following thousands of experiences in which combinations of factors are associated with the presence of monkeys. The wind is one factor: the less the wind, the more likely monkeys. The density of the foliage is another: the greater the density, the more likely monkeys. The activity of non-primate animals in the area is yet another factor: the greater their activity, the more likely monkeys. After a while, it is unnecessary to systematically wander through the list of factors. Rather, combinations of factors lead to probabilities or estimates of the presence of monkeys.

  EXAMPLES

  Triggering is far from an abstract idea. It is a very real phenomenon for all of us. And triggers are types of energy. A few words or nonverbal cues are often sufficient to initiate predictable behaviors and states of awareness. For example, when a friend asks you “How are your children?” information about your children pops into awareness without obvious effort on your part. The question triggers the brain systems responsible for what you experience. Systems and information for responding to familiar stimuli are in place. The response affirms that information about your children is already present and organized in representations. You know your children. You believe what is present in awareness. Divides are unlikely to be present. You might believe that you thought of the answer to the question, but your belief occurs after your response is initiated.

  There are other kinds of responses. Say a person to whom you have attributed devious motives asks, “How are your children?” Rather than awareness of your children, you are likely to experience concern about why the person is asking the question. What you experience is influenced by what you have attributed. You may not respond.

  These examples differ from those in which there is no ready response to a trigger. Suppose a friend asks, “Do you think your daughter would enjoy a year abroad in India?” An immediate response is unlikely to appear in awareness. There is no existing representation. What you are likely to experience is some of your daughter’s attributes and what you know about India, following which an answer appears. In effect, you generate a new model, perhaps also a belief and a divide, which could range from narrow to wide. The presence of the model would permit a rapid response if the question is asked at a later time. But again, the systems responsible for both the development of the model and your response are outside awareness.

  Similar scenarios apply to responses triggered by animals. For example, even at a distance of ten yards, most people respond with fright when they encounter a coiled rattlesnake shaking its rattle. The snake triggers their response. Such responses result from attributions that rattlesnakes are dangerous and they bite, which of course is correct. However, in the same circumstance, seasoned hikers will be relaxed because they attribute differently: rattlesnakes do not strike unless their spatial territory (which is about one yard from their head, if they are coiled) is violated. At a distance of ten yards, there is minimal danger.

  Triggered responses can occur in response to literally any information. If asked what you think about the president, you are likely to experience a ready answer. Music works the same way. Different types of music lead to predictable emotional responses among listeners and, as might be expected, fMRI studies reveal that music activates nearly every part of the brain.8 Familiar choices work the same way. Recall the examples in chapter 10 dealing with the selection of an entrée while dining: the items on the menu serve as triggers, which initiated predictable brain activity. Or what happens when someone announces that he will tell a lackluster joke that you have heard several times before?

  At other times, triggers and responses are highly ritualized. Consider a commonly observed interaction between two friends encountering each other while walking in opposite directions.

  John: “Hi, Bill. How are you?

  Bill: “Fine, and you?”

  John: “Great; see you soon.”

  The John-Bill interaction might appear to convey minimal information. But, in fact, it contains important information for both John and Bill. Bill’s response of “Fine, and you?” signifies to John that their friendship continues and no unexpected surprises are pending. His tone of voice may confirm his message.9 The brevity of such interactions is consistent with the idea that those who are interacting have conveyed and obtained the information they seek, although this is not obvious in the verbal content of what is said—in effect, a familiar response to a trigger is worth a thousand words. This brevity contrasts to situations in which what is said is interpreted literally as in, for example, encountering an acquaintance walking in the opposite direction who spends fifteen minutes responding to, “Hi. How are you?”

  At times, gestures take the place of words. Among friends, an elevated thumb, a special smile, a head nod, or a raised eyebrow can each serve as a response to questions such as, “How are you?” These types of interactions are brief and contained—a kind of communication shorthand. They are not thought through.

  There are multiple influencing factors. Responses may be affected by mirroring if one also is responding to the facial expression or posture of the person who is asking the question. The age of a person may trigger a specific response. Or the trigger may be a military or police uniform. There are also cultural factors: on first visiting an unfamiliar culture one lacks already-available responses to even routine greetings or questions, and divides dealing with what might be appropriate responses are usually wide.

  Essentially the same points apply to internal stimuli. A pain in the leg is likely to initiate a model of a cramp, perhaps also its remedy. Familiar mechanical-related stimuli are handled much the same way: a flat tire, running out of gas, a lawnmower failing to start, or the lights going out trigger explanations of their possible causes as well as tool-kit solutions.

  Triggering even applies when only indirect evidence is available. News that North Korean negotiators have again walked away from the negotiation table, that members of Mexican drug cartels have been involved in gun battles, or that Israel and the Palestinian Authority are unable to agree on an issue are followed by familiar beliefs and models in awareness.

  A common feature of the examples above is that the response to a trigger can quickly meld into a belief. You are likely to believe that the friend who asks about your children is interested in your children. For the non-friend who asks the same question, you are likely to believe that he has an unstated motive for doing so. When you relax a painful leg and the pain disappears, you are likely to be convinced that the source of the pain was a cramp.

  THEMES

  Several themes interweave through the preceding discussion. One is that the brain has evolved biases favoring predictable, low-energy-expenditure social interactions. Triggers and predictable responses are consistent with this view.

  A second theme is that external and internal stimuli have far more influence on our brain activity and awareness than we recognize. That this influence is ever present perhaps explains why efforts at serious concentration require removing oneself from triggering stimuli.

  Third, the brain has distaste for unpleasant triggers. An illustration of this point comes from a conversation I had with the manager of a radio station in Los Angeles. The station advertised that it covered the news of the world, including local traffic and weather, every twenty-two minutes. Meeting this time schedule required that the announcers gloss over literally every item they reported, except for the time of day. The manager had adopted the format after he discovered that reporting on the details and ambiguities of many news items resulted in a noticeable decline in the number of listeners to the station. He queried listeners about reasons for the decline. A typical reply was that they listened to the s
tation “to be assured that nothing unusual, frightening, or disastrous was happening.” In Los Angeles, reports of traffic jams or smog levels are familiar and irritating but not frightening triggers. However, reporting on the probability of the next major earthquake or the possibility of another 9/11 had aversive emotional effects among listeners.

  Fourth, triggering effects can spread through groups much like a plague. Belief contagion is a term often used to characterize such events. It describes how, in response to a trigger, members of groups can come to share a common belief and emotion with no discernible divide. Often there is a “priming” effect due to people already sharing similar mental states.10 A trigger such as an incident of public abuse or a perceived wrong decision during a sporting event serves to catalyze a sense of like-mindedness among participants, perhaps also a shared view of a common destiny.11 Action often follows. Spontaneous behavior seen at political conventions and antiestablishment demonstrations are examples.

  Fifth, triggering has direct physiological and structural effects on the brain. This is not surprising. Previously mentioned examples include changes in amygdala activity in response to threats and threat-related postures, the effects of music on the brain, and stressful work conditions. Structural effects are noted in the positive correlation between the volume of the amygdala and one’s social-network size: the more friends one has and with whom one interacts, the larger one’s amygdala.12

  TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND TO FORTY-FIVE THOUSAND YEARS AGO

  If responses to triggering in social interactions are largely examples of learned responses, their history among humans likely dates back well before the emergence of culture and possibly to the common ancestor of today’s primates. Certainly nonhuman primates exhibit such behavior—recall the trained monkeys that perform as commanded by the organ grinder. Certainly also mothers and infants developed familiar and predictable social triggers and responses. Learned responses are also likely in dealing with environmental information. As people became more familiar with the environment, predictable responses to events such as encountering a dangerous animal followed. And, as groups enlarged and became more cohesive, the more likely it was that a greater percentage of their social interactions involved familiar triggers and responses.

  “People act themselves into a way of believing as readily as they believe themselves into a way of acting.”1

  BACK TO SAINT KITTS

  On my forth trip to the island, I encountered a young man—Thomas—who had just returned home from completing college in the United States. He came to where we lived seeking a job. Part of our conversation follows.

  Author: “You really think you would like studying monkeys?”

  Thomas: “Yes, I’ve seen them all my life, but I never paid attention to their doings.”

  Author: “You realize that the current studies require that we get up at three a.m. so we can locate ourselves in the hills before the monkeys get up. And it gets hot out there. We stay and observe until three or four in the afternoon; then there is the walk back over the mountain.”

  Thomas: “I’m young and I can do that. But there is another reason. I want to know what you do for the CIA.”

  Author: “The CIA?”

  Thomas: “Yes, the CIA.”

  Author: “That’s a first. What makes you think I work for the CIA?”

  Thomas: “I think you all do, not just you.”

  Author: “OK, but let’s get back to my question: Where did you get this idea?”

  Thomas: “It’s obvious to me. You come and go from here regularly. You have all the new equipment. At the telegraph office, they say you send messages frequently and many go to your government. And then there are the monkeys. You tell people they are of scientific interest, but they’re just pests—everyone on the island knows that. They eat our crops and run away. Nobody would give you money to study pests. That’s crazy, like studying rats or bedbugs. I’ve heard they carry deadly diseases. That’s why most people won’t eat them. Some people think that you want to catch them and study their diseases so the CIA can use them. There is another matter. Last week, a government plane landed here and a person came to see you.”

  Author: “Thomas, you’re amazing and your ideas are amazing. Do others have the same idea?”

  Thomas: “Yes, people know you work for the CIA. Studying the monkeys is just a front.”

  Author: “Is there anything else we are doing for the CIA?”

  Thomas: “I believe you are mapping the island.”

  Author: “What?”

  Thomas: “Yes, mapping. You now know more about the island than most anyone who lives here. You have been to the volcano many times, just like you’ve been to the peninsula, where no one ever goes. Maybe there will be an invasion and you will have all the information.”

  I checked with other locals I knew on the island. They agreed: we were a CIA front.

  I hired Thomas, who turned out to be an excellent monkey observer and employee. Together we went over the daily data sheets, discussed how scientific papers would be written, wrote them, and sent them off to scientific journals. He became a member of our research family. He knew how we lived and what we thought. Our work and lives were transparent. I must have explained to him at least a dozen times that our telegrams to the government were to that part of government that funded scientific research and that the CIA was an entirely different part of government. And I explained to him again and again that the people who came to see us were either scientists or people from funding agencies who were checking on our research. And I explained and explained how the monkeys were of great scientific interest.

  Eighteen years later, when I left the island for the last time, Thomas came to see me off. I asked him if he had changed his mind about the CIA. “No, but I have come to like the CIA because I like you” was his farewell reply.

  Some beliefs are intransigent. They change rarely.

  One type is those for which there is and has been near consensus for as long as anyone can remember. Water flows downhill, not uphill, is an example. These beliefs are associated with justifying evidence. They consistently predict outcomes and they can be tested.

  Another type includes beliefs for which there is an absence of justifying evidence. They predict outcomes only to those who believe them. Examples include that there are gods or higher powers, people are basically good or basically bad, science is the sure antidote for all misunderstanding, political and idiosyncratic ideologies map to reality, and that I and others on Saint Kitts were employees of the CIA. This type is the topic of this chapter.

  INTRANSIGENT BELIEFS

  Resistance to change is the default state of beliefs in which people are emotionally and cognitively invested. Intransigent beliefs are preeminent examples. To those who adopt them, they convincingly explain what they believe. Ambiguity and uncertainty are reduced significantly, and pleasurable physiologic and psychological states are usually present. Once established, they require minimal energy expenditure by the brain. Their divides are narrow.

  Those harboring such beliefs assert them with conviction and insist that they are buttressed by confirming evidence or authority. Alternative beliefs and evidence are disregarded or rejected usually via negative attributions. Those committed to alternative beliefs represent a dangerous opposition. It is the refutation of alternative beliefs and evidence combined with the identification of those who harbor such beliefs or evidence as enemies that are signature features of intransigent beliefs.

  Belief perseverance is a term often used to describe intransigence. It refers to retaining a belief in circumstances in which there are equally or more compelling beliefs or clear evidence that is at odds with a belief to which a person or a group is committed.2 Deeply held political ideologies qualify. Believers are convinced of their relevance and worth as well as the wrongness and irrelevance of alternative political views. Individuals committed to religious beliefs—atheism too—often believe much the same way. Those with other belie
fs are either uninformed or enemies of the truth.

  There is an interesting question for which there is no known answer: What is the percentage of people’s beliefs that are intransigent? If those for which there is consensus and justifying evidence are excluded, a guess is 50 percent. On first past, 50 percent seems an unreasonably high percentage. Yet it seldom appears so when listening to discussions dealing with politics, human nature, religion, climate change, evolution, homosexuality, abortion, same-sex marriages, and moral issues. As often as not, such conversations amount to a series of belief-related assertions that undergo minimal if any revision. Recall that only two of the forty people interviewed for chapter 7 had changed a “deeply held belief” in the preceding six months.

  How do such beliefs develop? Strong candidates include indoctrination by others, self-indoctrination, culture, experience, and imaginings that turn to beliefs.

  INDOCTRINATION BY OTHERS

  Indoctrination amounts to inculcating individuals with specific ideas, attitudes, emotions, models, values, or cognitive strategies—in short, beliefs and models. These give structure, purpose, understanding, and meaning to experience, ideologies, supposed evidence, and myths in highly specific ways. Indoctrination amounts to teaching others to respond in predictable ways to specific triggers—that is, it’s a form of brain control. The process can be distinguished from liberal education, where questioning what is taught is acceptable and encouraged.