Born with a superstitious brain

An unusual experiment, conducted by Bruce Hood, Professor of Developmental Psychology at the University of Bristol, demonstrating that even the most rational people behave in irrational ways, became one of the star features at this year's British Association Festival of Science.

Professor Hood conducted the experiment to argue that scientists’ efforts to combat ‘irrational’ beliefs are ultimately futile.

To demonstrate his theory, Professor Hood asked members of the festival audience, if they were prepared to try on an old fashioned blue cardigan in return for a £10 reward. After receiving no shortage of volunteers, he then told the volunteers that the cardigan used to belong to Fred West, the mass murderer. On hearing this most of the volunteers put their hands down. Though a few did try it on, others moved away from them.

In fact, the cardigan had not belonged to Fred West. The experiment demonstrated that the belief that it had, made even the most rational of people feel uncomfortable.

Professor Hood said: “It is as if evil, a moral stance defined by culture, has become physically manifest inside the clothing.”

“Similar beliefs, which are held even among the most sceptical scientists, explain why few people would agree to swap their wedding rings for identical replicas. The difference between attaching significance to sentimental objects and believing in religion, magic or the paranormal is only one of degree.

“These tendencies are almost certainly a product of evolution. The human mind is adapted to reason intuitively, so that it can generate theories about how the world works even when mechanisms cannot be seen or easily deduced.

“Because we operate intuitively, it is pointless to get people to abandon their belief systems because they operate at such a fundamental level that no amount of rational evidence or counter-evidence is going to be taken on board to get people to abandon these ideas.”

Source: University of Bristol

Related stories:

Flying Into a Thunderstorm
Shakespeare's King Lear shouted to the heavens for a thunderstorm to vent its fury on him. A team of NASA scientists is hoping for precisely the same thing. They'd like a few really furious thunderstorms to come their way -- but not for Lear's dark purposes.
Level-headed: Economics experiment finds taste for equality
The rich don't get richer -- at least not in laboratory games. According to a new study of behavioral economics, published in the April 12, 2007 issue of Nature, people will spend their own money to make the rich less rich and the poor less poor. They do so without any hope of personal gain, acting, it seems, out of a taste for equality and sense of fair play.
Birthplace of Hurricanes
"Winds will grow soon to storms in Africa," laments Irish singer Enya in her song, Storms in Africa. She might have added "And hurricanes in the Americas."
Sonofusion Experiment Produces Results Without External Neutron Source
A team of researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Purdue University, and the Russian Academy of Sciences has used sound waves to induce nuclear fusion without the need for an external neutron source, according to a paper in the Jan. 27 issue of Physical Review Letters.
Purdue findings support earlier nuclear fusion experiments
Researchers at Purdue University have new evidence supporting earlier findings by other scientists who designed an inexpensive "tabletop" device that uses sound waves to produce nuclear fusion reactions.
NASA Researchers Studying Tropical Cyclones
NASA hurricane researchers are deploying to Costa Rica next month to investigate the birthplace of eastern Pacific tropical cyclones. They will be searching for clues that could lead to a greater understanding and better predictability of one of the world’s most significant weather events – the hurricane.

Crowd-powered NowPublic news site buys rumor website
Virtual news-gathering website NowPublic said Thursday it has bought rumor-backing Truemors to go beyond eye witness accounts to exposing developments "bubbling under the hood."
Personalized medicine initiative targets lung cancer
A U.S.-based personalized medicine initiative led by scientists from the Biodesign Institute, Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has secured its first major international collaboration with the government of Luxembourg.

News discussion:

General Science news