On February 22, 2020, “Crazy” Mike Hughes towed a homemade rocket into California’s Mojave Desert and launched it into the sky. Your goal? Watch the Earth from space and prove that it will be flat. This was his third attempt, and unfortunately, it was his last and fatal. He crashed shortly after take-off and died.
The nickname “Crazy Mike” might seem apt. Isn’t it crazy to risk your life fighting for an idea that was disproved in ancient Greece?
But Hughes’s conviction, while admirable, is not unique. In every recorded culture, people have had strong beliefs that seemed to lack evidence to support them – we can refer to them as “unusual beliefs.”
For evolutionary anthropologists like me, the prevalence of this kind of belief is a puzzle. The human mind has evolved to form accurate models of the world. For the most part, we do a good job. So why do people often adopt and develop beliefs that lack solid evidence?
In a new review published in the scientific journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, I propose a simple answer. People have come to believe in flat Earths, souls, and microchipped vaccines for the same reasons they believe in anything else. Their personal experiences lead them to believe that these beliefs are true.
Theories about unusual beliefs
Most sociologists have a different point of view on this issue. Paranormal beliefs, conspiracy theories, and pseudoscience seem to researchers to be completely immune to contrary evidence. Thus, they assume that experience is irrelevant to the formation of these beliefs. Instead, they focus on two other explanatory factors.
The first common explanation is cognitive biases. Many psychologists argue that humans use mental shortcuts to rationalize how the world works. For example, people are more likely to see intentions and intelligence behind random events. This type of bias may explain why people often say they believe that gods control phenomena such as weather or disease.
The second factor is social dynamics: people adopt certain beliefs not because they are sure they are true, but because others claim to believe them or because they want to convey a message about themselves to others. For example, some conspiracy theorists may hold strange beliefs because these beliefs come with a community of loyal and supportive believers.
Both approaches can partly explain how people come to have unusual beliefs. But they ignore three ways in which experience, along with these two other factors, can shape unusual beliefs.
1. Experience as a candidate
First, I suggest that experience can act as a filter. It identifies unusual beliefs that can be successfully spread throughout the population.
Take the flat earth theory as an example. We know for sure that it is wrong, but it is no more or less wrong than the theory that the Earth is conical. So what makes Flat Earth more successful than this false alternative as well?
The answer is as obvious as it sounds: the Earth appears flat when you stand on it, not conical. Visual evidence favors one exceptional belief over others. Of course, scientific evidence clearly shows that the Earth is round, but it is not surprising that some people prefer to trust what their eyes are telling them.
2. Experience as a motivator
My second argument is that experience acts as a catalyst for extraordinary beliefs. Strange experiences, such as auditory hallucinations, are difficult to explain and understand. So people do their best to explain these things, and in doing so, they create beliefs that seem appropriately strange.
Along these lines, sleep paralysis is a good case study. Sleep paralysis occurs in the period between sleep and wakefulness — where you feel like you’re awake, but you can’t move or speak. It’s scary and very common. Interestingly, those who suffer from it often feel as if there is a threatening factor sitting on their chest.
As a scientist, I interpret sleep paralysis as a result of neurological confusion. But it is not difficult to imagine how someone without a scientific background – that is, almost every human being in history – could interpret the experiment as evidence of the existence of supernatural beings.
3. Experience as a tool
To me, the third possible path to unusual beliefs is particularly interesting. In many cases, people not only develop unusual beliefs; They develop immersive practices that make these beliefs feel real.
For example, imagine that you are a farmer living in the highlands of Lesotho, South Africa, where I am conducting ethnographic fieldwork. You’re having a series of miscarriages and want to know why. So you go to a traditional healer – he tells you that you can learn the answer from your ancestors by drinking a hallucinogenic potion. You drink the potion. Soon after, he started seeing spirits. They talk to you and explain your misfortune.
Obviously, an experience like this can strengthen your belief in the existence of spirits. Immersive practices such as prayer, ritual dance, and religious use of psychoactive substances create evidence that makes the beliefs associated with them appear true.
What’s next?
Exceptional beliefs are neither inherently good nor bad. In particular, religious beliefs provide meaning, security, and a sense of community to billions of people.
But some unusual beliefs are cause for serious concern: misinformation about science and politics is widespread and extremely dangerous. By learning how these beliefs are shaped through experience, researchers can find better ways to combat their spread.
Equally important, my proposed perspective can encourage greater empathy and closeness with people who have beliefs that seem very different from your own. They are not “crazy” or liars. Like any other human being, they believe the evidence is in their favor.
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