The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [43]
This is the result of something called illusory correlation, the perception of a causal relationship between two sets of variables where none exists, or the overestimation of a connection between two variables. The illusory correlation effect is strongest when people form false associations between (X) membership in a statistically small group and (Y) rare and usually negative traits or behaviors. Trivially, for example, people tend to recall the days when they (X) washed their car and (Y) it rained; nontrivially, white Americans typically overestimate the rate that (X) African Americans are (Y) arrested.32
What can we do about illusory correlation and the broader problem of illusory pattern detection? In their final experiment, Whitson and Galinsky created a sense of lacking control in two groups of subjects, then asked one group to contemplate and affirm their most important values in life—a proven technique for reducing learned helplessness. The researchers then presented those same snowy pictures, finding that those who lacked control but had no opportunity for self-affirmation saw more nonexistent patterns than did those in the self-affirmation condition.
Interestingly, Whitson confessed to me, she originally devised this research protocol when she was going through a particularly stressful time in her life and feeling rather out of control herself. Call it therapeutic science. It seems to work. “Before undergoing surgery,” Whitson reflected, “people given details about what is going to happen have less anxiety and may even recover faster. Knowledge is another form of control.” This is reminiscent of a 1976 study by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer and her colleague Judith Rodin, now president of the Rockefeller Foundation, in a New England nursing home. Residents were given plants and the opportunity to see weekly films but with some variation of control. Residents on the fourth floor, who were in charge of watering the plants and could choose the night of the week they wanted to view the film, lived longer and healthier lives than the other residents, even those given plants that were watered by the staff. It was the sense of control that had the apparent effect on health and well-being.33 Perhaps this is what Voltaire meant at the end of Candide, in the title character’s rejoinder to Dr. Pangloss’s proclamation that “all events are linked up in this best of all possible worlds”: “Tis well said,” replied Candide, “but we must cultivate our gardens.”
The Power and Perils of Patternicity
Occasionally I am challenged about the harm of people embracing superstitions, along the lines of: “Oh, come on, Shermer, let people have their delusions. What’s the harm?” Setting aside for the moment the playful reading of one’s astrology chart in the newspaper or one’s fortune in an after-dinner cookie, my general answer is that it is better to live in a real world than a fantasy world. The harm, in fact, can be deadly serious when our patternicities are of the Type I false-positive type.
What’s the harm? Ask the victims of John Patrick Bedell, the gunman who attacked guards at the entrance of the Pentagon in March 2010, who now appears to have been a right-wing extremist and 9/11 “truther.” In an Internet posting, he said that he intended to expose the truth behind the 9/11 “demolitions.” Apparently the delusional Bedell intended to shoot his way into the Pentagon to find out what really happened on 9/11. Death by conspiracy.
Death by theory provides