Question

Examine the key reasons why so many people might seem to be attracted to more pseudoscience-type claims. Describe at least two (2) such claims that you have heard people make, and analyze the main reasons why such claims do or do not meet rigorous scientific methodology standards. Determine at least two (2) ways in which the material discussed this week has changed your own thinking.

Answer 1

In the present age, we are constantly bombarded with claims of experts, intellectuals, marketing agencies as the stalwart of truth and facts. In such an epistemologically shifting context where one fact can be contested by another fact, people often choose to adhere to some positions rigidly even in light of contradictory evidence. Social psychologists have tried to understand the reason behind people’s attraction towards such pseudoscientific explanations in terms of conginitive biases that people hold. Two such reasons are:

Sunk cost fallacy- this pertains to people’s tendency to continue to defend a previously dysfunctional decision by using subsequent set of decisions and actions in order to justify their personal investment in the previous decision. Thus for instance, people may continue to chomp down a newly launched packaged food tray even if it is unflavorful because they want to justify their act of buying the commodity as a ‘new’ and ‘healthy’ option in the market.

Confirmation bias- in general, people have the tendency to select and pay greater attention to facts in the environment which will validate their already existing attitudes and beliefs. Thus for instance, if people hold a stereotype about black cats being ominous, then they will be more likely to link an accident on the road to the spotting of the black cat in the vicinity of the victim and ignore facts such as rash driving on part of the victim which may have actually cause drug the accident.htus, it’s easier to pick an idea which proves one to which we have already become attached.

What such biases imply for human the condition is that members of even the most rational societies of the world, can fall prey to rigidity. In our own time, such cognitive structuring of facts can be seen to influence voting behaviour, foreign policies, and the development campaigns of marketing agencies and the health industry. These claims however fail to meet the standards of a scientific methodology as they inhibit a general curiosity for contrary information and skepticim in the beginning itself. The work of a scientist is in constant questioning of his/her own given state of knowledge and doubt rather than in rigid adherence to one’s own standpoint. The discussions on a separation between pseudoscientific claims and true scientific knowledge have made me think about the instances in our everyday life where we may easily fall prey to pseudoscience.

First, in terms of the health sector, as a psychology student, it has made be concerned about the new methods of treatment which may be introduced by the industrial stakeholders and reinforced in the community merely on the grounds that the new method offers ‘hope’ for a cure where there may be none in the present time. Here, peoples larger belief in hope for a treatment of a unique illness may compel people to abandon their better rational judgement and instead blindly choose the treatment procedure.

Second, the matter of cognitive biases such sunk cost fallacy, and clustering illusion has increased my sensitivity to the way I may blindly follow the advertising gimmicks in making choices as a consumer. In my allegedly ‘sound decisions’ of Reading the packaging labels of food items, and opting for advertising punclines such ‘healthy’, ‘good for active life’ on the packets of breakfast cereals or flavoured milk, I may be choosing based on less rational decisions and my consumer behaviour may be biased in favour of selecting only those information on the packets which validate my existing ideas about ‘health foods’ as ‘low in carbohydrates, trans fat’ even if the actual products may be beyond their date of expiry, or worst still loaded with MSG and preservatives.

As a student of psychology, I am opening myself to realise that the knowledge gained is as good as practiced and the cognitive biases in favour of pseudoscience present just such a case.