Abstract
Previous work showed
that people find explanations more satisfying when they contain irrelevant
neuroscience information. The current studies investigate why this effect
happens. In Study 1 (N=322), subjects judged psychology explanations that did
or did not contain irrelevant neuroscience information. Longer explanations
were judged more satisfying, as were explanations containing neuroscience
information, but these two factors made independent contributions. In Study 2
(N=255), subjects directly compared good and bad explanations. Subjects were
generally successful at selecting the good explanation except when the bad
explanation contained neuroscience and the good one did not. Study 3 (N=159)
tested whether neuroscience jargon was necessary for the effect, or whether it
would obtain with any reference to the brain. Responses to these two conditions
did not differ. These results confirm that neuroscience information exerts a
seductive effect on people's judgments, which may explain the appeal of
neuroscience information within the public sphere.
Citation
ID:
161889
Ref Key:
skolnick
weisberg2015judgmentdeconstructing