March 1, 2011 Scientists are a cerebral lot, for the most part,
and that trait certainly helps in trying to understand the
natural world. But their cultivated habit of logical thought can
also lead them astray when they unconsciously assume that the
broader public is used to thinking in the disinterested style of
scientific inference. Psychologists have established that
people's beliefs are hugely influenced by the beliefs' emotional
valence, by social pressures, and by other irrelevant and
generally unconscious factors. The explanations that people
offer for their beliefs are, to an upsetting degree, spurious
rationalizations of convictions held for other reasons. (Sam
Harris discusses some of the evidence in his new book The Moral
Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values; Free Press,
2010.) Scientists' efforts to apply reason to get a purchase on
truth can seem unappealing to the broader public because an
analytic style doesn't engage listeners emotionally. Critically,
people who are not engaged at