Hood, Bruce - Supersense

We mind-read and manipulate others to achieve our individual goals, but we also seek the emotional connections that others provide. We need the totems and sacred objects that bind us together. For many, religion provides these frameworks, but for the rest of us it can be a personal possession, a grubby blanket, a family heirloom, a famous painting, a beautiful statue, a historic monument, a martyr’s relic, or a return to the place where we were born. All of our sacred values convey a common sense of connectedness that joins us to each other and to our ancestors. In this way, we are extending ourselves to the rest of humanity from the past to the present.

We may be able to understand the external world through logical cost–benefit analysis, but within each of us is a sacred supersense. If we thought that our partner, spouse, lover, friend, ally, or fellow man did not share these sacred values, we would not trust them and we could not love them. We would see them as fundamentally different from us and even as less human. When people choose to wear a killer’s cardigan, they are violating our sacred values and our inherent supersense.

EPILOGUE

Eight months ago on my visit to Gloucester, I discovered that not all buildings associated with evil are levelled to the ground. Fred West’s first house in Gloucester, at 25 Midland Road, across a beautiful park from Cromwell Street, still stands today. Somehow this property had escaped the public’s attention when it was focused on Cromwell Street. At Midland Road, the dismembered body of his eight-year-old stepdaughter Charmaine was found buried in the cellar. I was unaware of this house until Nick the landlord told me how, despite being a reasonable man, he had felt ‘something there’ when he visited the property with a view to buying it in 1996. Despite an asking price of only a fraction of the true value, Nick declined. He thought he would have trouble renting it. As it turned out, this is not a problem in a city like Gloucester. It is a deprived area with a large number of migrant workers always in need of affordable accommodation.

On that odd April day, I walked across the park full of people sunning themselves, crossed a busy main road, and found the semidetached property in what was clearly a run-down part of the city. Munchi, a teenage girl, sat on the steps of the house reading a book. I discreetly photographed the house, which immediately made me feel guilty and self-conscious, but I had to ask Munchi about living there. So I approached and tentatively tried to strike up a conversation. I can be an awkward person at the best of times, but I needed to know if she had experienced anything unusual in the house.

Imagine being a teenage girl relaxing with a book on a hot April day and being approached by a middle-aged man wearing an inappropriate leather jacket and asking strange questions. She looked nervous and said that she lived with her cousin, Diana. She was the one to ask. Munchi disappeared inside and returned moments later with Diana, an older woman, who was looking equally suspicious. I asked again, trying to be as relaxed as possible. ‘Have you noticed anything strange since you have been living in the house?’ Diana was much more open. She said she saw things out of the corner of her eye in the living room. I don’t know what I expected to hear. It’s such a leading question in the first place. I asked if they knew who Fred West was. Both looked blank and shook their heads.

For a brief instance, I was tempted to tell them the history of their home. How twenty years ago the world’s media was focused on Fred and Rosemary West. How people were appalled and disgusted when the details of the gruesome murders of young women and two daughters became known. Telling them this history would have been no stunt with a cardigan to make a point. Munchi and Diana were really living with the past. Their response to this news would be genuine but devastating. What was I to do?

They say ignorance is bliss and to take that away is cruel and unnecessary. So I thanked Munchi and Diana for their time and left them baffled by the strange professor. By the time these words are in print, I expect that Munchi and Diana will have moved on and some other unsuspecting tenants will be living at 25 Midland Road. But if not, Munchi and Diana, I am sorry for not telling you, but I thought it was better for you not to know. There is no essence of evil in your house. It’s simply something our minds create. But knowing that doesn’t make it feel any more comfortable to be living in the house of a murderer. That’s because we are a sacred species.

READER’S NOTES

In Brief

Belief in the supernatural is extremely common in today’s modern society. Whether it is religious or secular notions of paranormal activity, most people hold some form of belief that goes beyond the current natural understanding of the world. SuperSense attempts to explain this by looking for the origins of such beliefs in children’s everyday reasoning. The book surveys the research into early childhood behaviour to reveal that the foundations of many aspects of adult belief appear early in development. This way of thinking is our ‘supersense’ and, while its influence may disappear with education and increased rational control, it may never entirely go away, especially if the culture supports such beliefs. Moreover, it may become more apparent at times when our ability to exercise rational control is weakened by stress, disease or diminished mental agility. Believing in the supernatural also appears to offer comfort and control when we feel under threat. However, we are not all the same in our reliance on our supersense. There is much room for individual variation. Some of us are more inclined than others towards our supersense, but this may not be a weakness; it may be the basis for why some people are more creative in their thinking. Also our supersense may forge the bonds that hold us together as a society. This is because the supersense may enable individuals to believe and act as if there were some supernatural property that binds them together to form close personal bonds with others. In this way, social cohesion may benefit from this perception of supernatural connection. So, with its natural origins, creative influence and social benefits, it seems unlikely that such a supersense will ever be eradicated entirely by reason.

Brief Biography

Bruce is currently Chair of Developmental Psychology and Director of the Bristol Cognitive Development Centre at the University of Bristol (1999–). He was previously a professor in the Department of Psychology, Harvard University (1995–99) and a visiting scientist at MIT (1994–95). He obtained his first degree in psychology at Dundee University in 1984 and his PhD from Cambridge University in 1991.

About the Author

I was born in Toronto and my middle name is MacFarlane, a legacy of my Scottish heritage from my father’s side. My mother is Australian, with the very unusual first name of ‘Loyale’. I used to believe for many years that she had two sisters called ‘Hope’ and ‘Faith’ but this was just wishful thinking. ‘Why Toronto?’, I hear you ask. My father was a journalist and plied his art on various continents. By the time, I finally settled in Dundee, Scotland, for the majority of my childhood, I had already lived in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. (If you are wondering, I support Scotland during the Rugby World Cup.) I have an older brother who was also born in Toronto but he doesn’t have my mid-Atlantic accent. He is sensible. He is a lawyer. In Dundee, I went to school and then to university where I studied psychology. I then went to Cambridge to conduct research on visual development in babies and completed my PhD in 1991. That year I got married with a ‘Dr’ in front of my name. My wife is a real doctor and wouldn’t marry me until I was doctored. After some post-doc experience at University College London, we both set off to Boston to sample US academia for a year. By the time we were ready to travel, we were three as my eldest daughter had just been born. When my wife wasn’t paying attention, I applied for, and was offered, a professorship at Harvard. What was supposed to be just one year in the US turned into five, by which time we decided that we really did not want to raise our daughter with the same accent as mine. We moved back to Bath, a beautiful city where we never thought we would ever have the opportunity to work. Bristol University, which is not too far away from Bath, offered me a professorial chair in developmental psychology, so I was well pleased. That was ten years ago. We now have a second daughter and we all live in a medieval barn with mice. I still conduct research and teach at Bristol. But I also write books. That’s where I am up to now.