The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations.

@article{citeulike:1939499, abstract = {Abstract Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to generate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific information. Even irrelevant neuroscience information in an explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with people's abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of this explanation. We tested this hypothesis by giving na\"{i}ve adults, students in a neuroscience course, and neuroscience experts brief descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of four types of explanation, according to a 2 (good explanation vs. bad explanation) x 2 (without neuroscience vs. with neuroscience) design. Crucially, the neuroscience information was irrelevant to the logic of the explanation, as confirmed by the expert subjects. Subjects in all three groups judged good explanations as more satisfying than bad ones. But subjects in the two nonexpert groups additionally judged that explanations with logically irrelevant neuroscience information were more satisfying than explanations without. The neuroscience information had a particularly striking effect on nonexperts' judgments of bad explanations, masking otherwise salient problems in these explanations.}, address = {Yale University.}, author = {Weisberg, Deena Skolnick S. and Keil, Frank C C. and Goodstein, Joshua and Rawson, Elizabeth and Gray, Jeremy R R. }, citeulike-article-id = {1939499}, doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20040}, issn = {0898-929X}, journal = {J Cogn Neurosci}, keywords = {jc-jcn}, month = {November}, posted-at = {2007-11-19 21:16:17}, priority = {2}, title = {The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations.}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20040}, year = {2007} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1939499 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1939499 TI - The Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations. JF - J Cogn Neurosci AD - Yale University. SN - 0898-929X N2 - Abstract Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to generate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific information. Even irrelevant neuroscience information in an explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with people's abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of this explanation. We tested this hypothesis by giving naïve adults, students in a neuroscience course, and neuroscience experts brief descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of four types of explanation, according to a 2 (good explanation vs. bad explanation) x 2 (without neuroscience vs. with neuroscience) design. Crucially, the neuroscience information was irrelevant to the logic of the explanation, as confirmed by the expert subjects. Subjects in all three groups judged good explanations as more satisfying than bad ones. But subjects in the two nonexpert groups additionally judged that explanations with logically irrelevant neuroscience information were more satisfying than explanations without. The neuroscience information had a particularly striking effect on nonexperts' judgments of bad explanations, masking otherwise salient problems in these explanations. KW - jc-jcn AU - Weisberg, Deena Skolnick AU - Keil, Frank C AU - Goodstein, Joshua AU - Rawson, Elizabeth AU - Gray, Jeremy R PY - 2007/11/15/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2008.20040 ER -