Hood, Bruce - Supersense

Religion is the most familiar face of such supernatural belief: most religions have deities and other supernatural beings that are not restricted to natural laws. Even many people who do not believe in God are nevertheless willing to entertain the notion that there are phenomena, patterns, energies, and forces operating in the world that cannot be explained by natural laws. God may require supernatural belief, but supernatural beliefs do not require God.

In the next chapter, I want to develop this idea further by demonstrating that most of us can hold supernatural beliefs even when we are not fully aware that we do.

And, for that, I need an old cardigan.

CHAPTER TWO

COULD YOU WEAR A KILLER’S CARDIGAN?

WHEN IT COMES to making choices, most of us feel confident that we evaluate the evidence objectively, weigh the pros and cons, and act according to reason. Otherwise, we would have to concede that our decisions are unreasonable, and few individuals are willing to acknowledge this. But the truth is that human psychology is littered with many examples of faulty reasoning. This is why scientists are so interested in studying the mistakes we make and our biases and logical errors. They seem to fly in the face of reason and suggest that there must be underlying mechanisms responsible for controlling our thought processes. This is the mind design that I talked about in the last chapter. The aspect of mind design that interests me is the one that leads us to infer the presence of patterns, forces, and energies operating in the world where there may be none. This is what I mean by a supersense. Even if you deny having a supersense, you may still be susceptible to its influence, because the processes that lead to supernatural thinking are not necessarily under conscious or willful control. And, as you will see later in the book, some researchers even question whether there is such a thing as conscious willful control.

I like to illustrate this point in the public lectures I give on the origins of supernatural thinking by talking about our reactions to memorabilia. These objects are the best examples because most audiences immediately recognize what I am talking about when it comes to considering the hidden power of simple inanimate objects. To demonstrate the psychological impression created by objects I hand out a black fountain pen dating from the 1930s that once belonged to Albert Einstein. Okay, I lie to the audience about the provenance of the pen, but the belief is sufficient. The reverence and awe towards this object is palpable. Everyone wants to hold it. Touching the pen makes them feel good. Then I ask the audience if they would be willing to wear the cardigan I brought along. Given the oddity of the question and the tattered state of the woollen garment, the audience is understandably suspicious. After a moment’s consideration, usually around one-third of the audience raise their hand. So I offer a prize. More hands are raised. I then tell them about Cromwell Street as an image of Fred West rises menacingly from the bottom of the PowerPoint display. Once they are told that the cardigan belonged to Fred West, most hands usually shoot down, followed by a ripple of nervous laughter. People recognize that their change of heart reflects something odd.

There are always the exceptions, of course. Some people resolutely keep their hand raised. Typically, they are male and determined to demonstrate their rational control. Or they suspect, rightly, that I was lying about the owner of the cardigan. What is remarkable is that other audience members sitting next to one of these individuals visibly recoil from their neighbour who is willing to wear a killer’s cardigan. How could someone even consider touching such an appalling garment? It’s a stunt, of course – a deliberate ploy set up to create a sense of revulsion in an unsuspecting audience.

Last year, this stunt earned me some notoriety in Norwich, England. 1I was presenting my theory on the origin of the supersense and why science and rationality will not get people to abandon such beliefs easily. The presentation took place at a major British science festival, and the world’s science press was there. Since every quality paper had a science correspondent present, I circulated an article outlining my ideas so that there would be a good turnout at the press conference. I argued that humans are born with brains that infer hidden forces and structures in the real world, and that some of these inferences naturally lead us to believe in the supernatural. Therefore, we cannot put sole responsibility for spreading supernatural belief on religions and cultures, which simply capitalize on our supersense.

The cardigan demonstration was meant to illustrate to an educated, intelligent, rational audience (albeit one that included journalists, who are always looking for a ‘hook’) that sometimes our beliefs can be truly supernatural but have nothing to do with religious indoctrination. Even atheists tend to show revulsion at the idea of touching Fred West’s cardigan. If it’s true that our beliefs can be supernatural but unconnected to religion, then it must also be true that humans will not necessarily evolve into a rational species, because a mind designed for generating natural explanations also generates supernatural ones.

News of the cardigan stunt and my comments spread like a virus across the world’s digital networks. I gave interview after interview, and the event generated web postings on both religious and secular sites with a mixture of ridicule and praise. Some colleagues didn’t like the showmanship, but I had made a point that got people talking. People were infuriated. I had touched a raw nerve. It was a sacrilegious stunt, even though no particular religion had been offended. But what had I demonstrated that upset the public so much? What did wearing a killer’s cardigan really show? Was it a demonstration of irrationality? How did this prove that humans will not evolve a rational mind?

I think the killer’s cardigan illustrates our common supersense. It says something about the sacred values of the group. It also says something about us as both individuals and group members. Their revulsion to the cardigan could reflect a common supernatural belief that invisible essences can contaminate the world and connect us together, almost like some form of human glue. Or at least it feels as if there is something tangible that joins us together. In academic social psychology, ‘social glue’ is the term to describe the mechanisms for the social connectedness of a group. 2Any behaviour that causes members of a group to feel more connected can operate as social glue. This is conspicuous at sporting events where many different fans from all walks of life come together as one. Hundreds of complete strangers who would normally not interact with each other suddenly become a highly organized and unified collective. In 1896 the French sociologist Gustave Le Bon described this phenomenon of crowds: ‘Sentiments, emotions, and ideas possess in crowds a contagious power as intense as that of microbes.’ It is indeed as though something physical infects such groups. Unfortunately for English soccer, very often the power of this mass mentality can overwhelm normally law-abiding individuals who find themselves caught up in hooliganism and brawling with rival teams. Le Bon argued over one hundred years ago that social glue explains why supporters do not feel individually responsible for their actions and claim that they simply went with the crowd. 3

I see this glue also operating at the individual level. Each of us can feel a special, intimate connectedness to another individual. I believe this mechanism can work at the level of a perceived inner essence. An essence is an underlying, invisible property that defines the true nature of something. It doesn’t really exist, but we think and behave as if there were some inner stuff inside people that makes them who they are. I examine this notion more thoroughly throughout the book because it explains a lot of our peculiar behaviour toward others and their possessions. I examine the recent research on essentialist thinking in children and show that this type of thinking can lead us not only to perceive an invisible property that inhabits individuals but also to transfer that property to their objects. It might be natural to believe there is an essential connection or glue that can bind us to others or repel us from them, even though such a connection would be supernatural. That’s why I think the cardigan stunt revealed that some people believed that the essence of Fred West had contaminated his clothing.