Contact: rwetheri@smu.edu
Avoiding Delusion
In the April issue, I commented on gullibility—our tendency to be fooled by chicanery. Some of you have commented on how serious this tendency is, asking how we can fool ourselves so often. I believe science has a partial answer.
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There are two often competing desires that drive the human social condition: the need to have our preconceptions confirmed, and the need for reliable information. Often enough, we find these to be compatible. In each case, we sort experience into mental categories: confirmed vs. falsified beliefs (for example, honored vs. betrayed friendships) and factual vs. fanciful reports (e.g., the world is flat or the world is not).
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Our socially engaged minds are wired to support these expectations. In the front of our brains, just behind our furrowed brows, is a small region known by its forbidding label as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). As it processes new information, it checks its compatibility with past experience—it doesn’t want inconsistent stuff floating around to confuse us. So it suppresses new thoughts that contradict our presumptions and biases (he’s still a bad egg, even if he did a good deed!). Think of this as our “delete button”: it removes contrary new information, regardless of whether it’s true, before it finds permanent residence.
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The tug of war between belief and reality is problematic, of course. “Do you know,” said Alice, “I always thought Unicorns were fabulous monsters! I never saw one alive before!”
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“ Well, now that we have seen each other,” said the Unicorn, “if you’ll believe in me, I’ll believe in you. Is that a bargain?”
But there’s another part of the brain that protects false information from being kept by mistake. It lies deep in the brain. It’s called the
anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and it keeps us on the narrow track of truthfulness. It is in a continual search for factual errors in judgment or belief, ready to smite them. Think of this as our “oh flip!” button: It helps us reclaim what is true and reject what is not.
The DLPFC and ACC are next to each other and in physical contact. They often shake hands. Sometimes they arm wrestle. It’s good to keep them in mind.
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Ron Wetherington