It Is Harder To Disbelieve, Than To Believe

Why do people believe in a god? Why do people believe what politicians say? Why do people believe in “Intelligent Design?” Why do people believe in some pretty stupid things? Could it be that they are just lazy? Michael Shermer sheds some light on this in his Scientific American article Adam’s Maxim and Spinoza’s Conjecture.

What do these results tell us? “Several psychological studies appear to support [17th-century Dutch philosopher Benedict] Spinoza’s conjecture that the mere comprehension of a statement entails the tacit acceptance of its being true, whereas disbelief requires a subsequent process of rejection,” report Harris and his collaborators on the study in their paper, published in the December 2007 Annals of Neurology. “Understanding a proposition may be analogous to perceiving an object in physical space: We seem to accept appearances as reality until they prove otherwise.” So subjects assessed true statements as believable faster than they judged them as unbelievable or undecidable.

This research supports Spinoza’s conjecture that most people have a low tolerance for ambiguity and that belief comes quickly and naturally, whereas skepticism is slow and unnatural.

From this I conclude that John Lennon was not lazy. The lyrics of his song god prove this. I sincerely believe that the world would be a better place if we all were a little more like John Lennon and were a little more skeptical. Imagine a public and a Congress that was more skeptical of George W. Bush. Would we be in Iraq if we were not so quick to believe? We should choose to disbelieve before we believe, not the other way around. This is actually the way of science, as Michael Shermer explains:

The scientific principle of the null hypothesis—that a claim is untrue unless proved otherwise—runs counter to our natural tendency to accept as true what we can comprehend quickly.

By the way, Michael Shermer has a blog. Doesn’t everyone? You can find it, and maybe even read it, here.