The Psychology Of Religious Belief

Clip from PBS documentary series The Human Spark episode 3 Brain Matters hosted by Alan Alda

Category:

Education

Tags:

• religion
• psychology
• science
• belief
• faith
• god
• atheism

[insanewarlock666]

I prefer to be aborted than to be born to be religious :D

[spartacandream]

We see the birth of the gods in the minds of man, looking at the clouds, we asked who was moving them, and not immediately what.

[TrustingDoubt]

Fascinating clip. Thanks for making this information more accessible! Andy Thompson's American Atheists talk, (which is great; I recommend it) outlines a variety of instincts that together feed the religious impulse, but seeing the actual studies re-enacted makes it less abstract.

[TheConcolor]

@mooktank Thankfully, they were. I managed to find the original study at scribd[dot]com/doc/23525253/So­­cial-evaluation-by-preverbal-­i­nfants-Hamlin-Wynn-Bloom-200­7

I was happy to discover that the study was indeed blinded. They simply didn't bother to do so when they reenacted it for the documentary.

[mooktank]

I hope they're a little more careful in their "real" experiments.

[meritocratic1337]

@TheConcolor Ah, thanks for the link. I'll take a look at the study, and I'm glad to hear that it was more rigorous than they made it appear in the documentary. As for being scientifically-minded, right back at you.

[TheConcolor]

@meritocratic1337

I managed to find the original study at scribd[dot]com/doc/23525253/So­cial-evaluation-by-preverbal-i­nfants-Hamlin-Wynn-Bloom-2007

I was happy to discover that the study was indeed blinded. They simply didn't bother to do so for the documentary-makers. Good to see lots of scientifically minded people out here on the interwebs :D

[meritocratic1337]

@FlyingFree333 It's not paranoia to point out a very reasonable confounding variable in an experiment, especially when the mechanism of that variable has been shown to exist and when there's an obvious mechanism which could lead to that variable to a false positive result. And though it's nice that it's peer-reviewed, not everyone has as much leniency in approach as do social scientists. I don't mean to donwplay their research, but it is often more forgiving than it ought to be.

[TheConcolor]

@FlyingFree333

FYI: I tracked down the original study and found, to my delight, the following statement: "A coder blind to the identities of the characters monitored infants’ looking times and administered the choice measure."

It seems the fine folks at Yale University did indeed use a blind in the actual study, and simply did not bother to do so for the documentary. I happily retract my original statement saying that this must be a bogus study. Clearly, the study is scientifically diligent.

[FlyingFree333]

@TheConcolor

I'm well aware that the majority of communication is nonverbal, I'm also aware that none of that communication was present here, the toys were simply held out with no preference shown to either one. Watch the video again, watch the researcher's body language, they do not show any difference between the toys. Body language is not invisible, we may pick it up mostly unconsciously but it can be observed.

[meritocratic1337]

@TheConcolor I agree completely with your suggestion, to improve the study. I saw the same flaw when I watched the video. It's a problem with many studies in the social sciences: they just aren't that concerned with potentially confounding variables.

[TheConcolor]

@FlyingFree333 You seem to have a different view than what I have on how much humans communicate through body-language. I suggest the following read to learn more about my view: wikipedia[dot]org/wiki/Nonverb­al_communication#The_relation_­between_verbal_and_nonverbal_c­ommunication

How can I learn more about your view?