Back into my series of interviews for this week! My next blog interview is with a man who is at the coalface of educating and researching beliefs in weird things.
Dr Mark Henn is from the University of New Hampshire’s Psychology Department, which contains a grad program that values teaching enough to actually spend time and money employing expert teachers to teach grad students how to teach. He is keen on culture and the influence it has on society and will be heading to Europe on a Fullbright Scholarship. We met at The Amazing Meeting 3 and I hope to see him again in person (as opposed to emails that Googlemail no longer can keep track of due to sheer number) this year! Thanks Mark!
How did you first become interested in the paranormal and pseudoscientific?
Hmmm… I suppose it happened twice. In High School, I became interested through Science Fiction and through some incredible claims that were floating about at the time. In particular, I remember “pyramid power”, Von Daniken’s “Chariots of the Gods”, this guy named Uri Geller, and Zener Cards. My sister even ran an experiment using Zener Cards, looking for psychic powers in High School Students. I was a participant. I remember predicting “star”, getting “circle”, and complaining “I was so going to say ‘circle’! I knew it was ‘circle’! Aaaaugh!” … and my sister saying “ok, we will give you a “hit” for that one.”
The second time was not really until Grad School. The man who would eventually be my thesis advisor, Victor Benassi, taught a course in “Belief in Paranormal Phenomena”. I was his teaching assistant one semester. A lot of it was social psychology — the social-cognitive heuristics we use in order to make sense of the world, and how these normal thought processes lead us to believe some rather extraordinary phenomena as well. Other profs who taught that course used a “History of Psychology” approach to the subject matter, as it is interwoven with psychology from its very foundations. I have since taught that course, and developed another with Victor on similar content, with a different approach, but give major credit to Victor for teaching that first course in such a way that I was simply fascinated by the whole area.
Your PhD thesis used an all-female population on an ESP task; was there something in particular that interested you in how women’s beliefs are influenced by weird things?
Heh… Oddly enough, your question here is a non-sequitur. The reasons I used an all-female sample were mostly pragmatic. First, previous studies had found no major differences (other than perhaps a difference in magnitude) in belief between men and women, so that I could safely study just one set and not have to run twice as many trials (on the chance that mine would be the experiment to show sex differences — I would have to allow for that possibility). Second, at the time, we had roughly twice as many women as men in our introductory psychology classes, so if it was to be one or the other, it would be much easier to measure women.
So I suppose I am not particularly interested in how women or men are influenced — but if sex differences are predictive, I am very much interested. In other words, I do not start off by assuming differences between men and women, but if the data point to them, that is where I will look!
Is it reasonable to classify all psychics as ‘crooks’ and all pseudoscientists as ‘deluded’?
“Reasonable”? Isn’t that in the eye of the beholder? I personally would not classify all psychics as crooks, nor all pseudoscientists as deluded–but then, I may not be reasonable, myself!
It is, in my opinion, quite possible to be an ardent believer in paranormal phenomena, even in one’s own paranormal abilities, through perfectly normal learning. If your own experience suggests psychic ability (say, you remember several dreams which, in retrospect, seem predictive of future events)… if you ask the best experts you know, and they verify it (say, your trusted school teachers and/or parents and/or members of your church or community)… if you have never been taught about confirmation bias, or about sensation, perception, memory, cognition… then your best explanation is a paranormal one. To insist “there must be a mundane explanation” when your experience, your experts, and your learning all argue otherwise, is closed-minded (Mind you, it would be correct… but for all the wrong reasons. And skepticism is a process, not an outcome).
To get back on track– I have known a sitter at a spiritualist circle, who was completely convinced that they were in contact with the spirits of dead scientists, and would soon be shown remarkable new information that would change the world. Was she deluded? In one sense, yes. Her explanation was not right. In another sense, though, all the evidence she had available to her pointed to that conclusion, so she was perfectly rational (The leader of her group, however, may have been actively manipulating what group members experienced; I do not have enough information to either accuse or acquit).
To me, though, the question as you ask it misses the point. Belief in such extraordinary claims is important because it shows how we do believe. Some people believe in, say, atoms and molecules, because they have seen the evidence. Most of us, however, have not. Why do we believe in things well beyond our experience? Studying all sorts of belief is helpful (It is entirely possible that some currently accepted science is simply wrong, but widely believed for the same social-cognitive reasons that ESP is believed in. Freud’s psychoanalysis comes to mind as a possible example from the near past).
I hear that as a part of your 2008 Fullbright Scholarship requirements, you’re to study in Europe and investigate cultural influences on beliefs and behaviour?
It is one of the most plausible “beginnings” of the culture my students and I live in. The beginnings of philosophy, of science, of democracy, of organized athletic competition… (if you watch “My Big Fat Greek Wedding“, you will see that it is the beginning of everything, including Japanese culture.) So much of my current culture — things like basic “human rights” — can be traced to Ancient Greece. And so much of, say, Russian culture, can be traced to Ancient Bulgaria. And those are the two countries I am studying in.
My application was based around one course I teach, in which we examine (in part) how our culture is shaped by our physical environment. Because, just as in physical evolution by natural selection, cultures build upon the successful cultures of the past, our culture has been shaped by the physical environment of Greece. And I wanted to see what shaped my culture — what shaped me — so very long ago.
Finally, your statement that was quoted in the Australian Skeptic and in my Sunday paper at The Amaz!ng Meeting 2007 – “It’s not enough to be noticed; it’s not enough to simply have an audience. Paris Hilton has an audience. What we as skeptics need is empirical data showing the effectiveness of what we are doing. We don’t want to make a big splash; we want to make a big difference.” – what would you hope for the future of skeptics, particularly your own views on what would be the best way to start?
In truth, that statement is applicable to much more than the skeptics’ movement, although they have a special role to play. The world is in trouble; there are crises of energy use, of pollution, of overconsumption… and entirely too many solutions are simply not solutions. Too many people want to “raise awareness” of this, that, or the other problem — what does that accomplish? I asked my classes this semester “how many of you are aware of the situation in Darfur?” Nearly every hand went up. I asked “how many of you have actually done something to address that situation?” Not one hand. (That changed within that very week.)
Skeptics should follow evidence. If we do things that make a difference, we should have evidence of that difference. If we have made everyone aware of, say, the pernicious nature of the predatory psychics who prey on parents who have had children abducted… if we have made everyone aware of that, in the same sense that my students were aware of Darfur, then we have accomplished nothing. If we actually make a real difference, we must be able to demonstrate that. Otherwise, how do we know? “I just know” is no more acceptable for skeptics saying their awareness-raising campaigns work than it is for believers saying that dowsing works.
Again, this applies to more than just skeptics, but to me the skeptics are a bit of a litmus test. If we say that some particular program “was successful” (say, Lancaster’s “Stop Sylvia Browne“, or Kelly’s “Project Jason”), then we should be prepared to say what our measure of “success” was, and to demonstrate the change from before the program to after. In truth, I may be asking too much of any of these — I doubt any of the leaders are trained experimentalists who saw the need to take a baseline measure before they began, but rather saw a problem and decided to do something about it. But that is partly my point — to do something right, we need to be able to verify, and so it really does help to begin by taking baseline data in order to verify any effect you may have had.
It is entirely possible that our intervention has had no effect — in which case, why take the effort to continue an ineffective program–or worse, that it has had a negative impact. Unless we are measuring, we cannot know. And if our effect is “raised awareness”… how can we even measure, in any meaningful way? And if we cannot get skeptics to agree to follow the evidence when it comes to their own behavior, then what hope do we have for other groups?
The good news is that for most of what we do, there are straightforward measures of “success” that are good enough to build on. Robert Lancaster, for example, can measure success by emails from former believers. These have poured in, and are sufficient evidence, for him, to merit continuing his website. Had he continued in the absence of any such feedback, he could have believed he was making a difference, but it would have been a belief in absence of any supporting evidence. Of course, many of our beliefs are held in absence of any evidence–but here was a case where evidence really was available, and relevant to the continuation of his efforts. When we have evidence, we can build upon what we have found, and know that we are not building on an illusion. He does not have to believe he is making a difference; he can demonstrate that he is. This should be the goal for anyone, but it should be easiest to achieve with the skeptical community.
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