Unquestioned assumptions

IT IS human nature to unconsciously filter out information we don’t want to receive. Psychologists have various words for this type of fallibility. There is the halo and horn effect, which refers to the tendency to allow one overriding positive or negative impression about a person to cloud our overall judgement. And there is the primacy effect, which is the tendency to cling tenaciously to first impressions, even if these are contradicted by later information. We all hold beliefs and make assumptions based on data of variable reliability: the trick is to know that and be willing to question our own ‘sacred cows’.

In this issue, there is quite an emphasis on questioning assumptions. Our lead article, by psychologist Jay Joseph (see page 12), turns the spotlight on twin studies that supposedly prove the genetic basis of various psychological disorders. The ‘facts’ may not at all be what they seem, he sets out to show in a rigorous analysis of the evidence to date. Yet, as far as the medical and scientific world is concerned, it is effectively proven that schizophrenia is a biological disorder, largely inherited through the genes.

There are, however, some researchers who are putting forward a completely new theory for predisposition to schizophrenia. Could it be linked to deficiency of vitamin D (see page 2)? Of course, initially, this sounds preposterous and the possibility has been dismissed outright by those who are committed to other explanations. Science is often more about confirming beliefs than seeking for truth.

Dr Rupert Sheldrake, originally a high-flying mainstream scientist, opened himself to censure when he first began to explore a non-reductionist approach to science and sought to show that mental fields connect living beings (thus explaining phenomena such as telepathy). Pat Williams, who interviews him (see page 24) and also questions assumptions in her column on page 11, recalls how once, in discussion with an eminent scientist, she made the case that telepathy might exist. “Even if what you tell me turned out to be true, I still wouldn’t believe it!” he blustered, providing an elegant example of the primacy effect in practice.

If we firmly believe something and are confronted by disproof of it, we tend to search for justifications to reduce the tension thus induced. Psychologists call that one cognitive dissonance. Leon Festinger, the psychologist who coined the term, studied its effects on the beliefs of a small religious cult whose leader, Mrs Keech, had been ‘told’ by beings from another planet that she and her followers would be rescued by spaceship on the night before flood and earthquake ended the world. On the appointed night the group waited with growing consternation for a spaceship that didn’t come. But then Mrs Keech suddenly received a message from the alien beings, telling her that the devotion of her followers had been sufficient to save the world from disaster. Thus, the group members were able to put aside the uncomfortable possibility that they had been fools, a belief that did not accord with their own image of themselves as intelligent people and that therefore would have caused cognitive dissonance. Reprieved, they all the more gladly revered their leader once more. We may, of course, think such behaviour far removed from our own. However, as Dr Arthur Deikman shows (see page 34), cult thinking is an unrecognised but common element of everyday life.

Some assumptions take on the mantle of fact purely because they have been acted on as if they were fact for some considerable time. The national curriculum has been with us, in its present form, for 15 years and is assumed, particularly by parents, to be a ‘good thing’. But now innovative teachers are demonstrating that children learn far more, and enthusiastically, if, once their curiosity is whetted, they are given the tools to follow where their interest takes them (see page 20). We tend to assume that being on the autistic spectrum is a disability. Yet, as Joe Griffin points out in his review of Professor Michael Fitzgerald’s book Autism and Creativity (page 44), were it not for autistic thinking we might not have advanced very far beyond the Stone Age.

We can never be too alert to the tunnel vision that can be induced by unquestioned assumptions. On page 48, Julie Perry takes us to task for questioning, in the last issue, the validity of the diagnosis of schizophrenia and yet blindly accepting that there is such a condition as dyslexia.

The Editors

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